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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The 
Daily Pathway 



By 

MARGARET E. SANGSTER 

Author of "Joyful Life " and 
" Talks between Times" 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU STREET 
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



33- 



.571 



1 



■ 

1904 

CLASS " ; 
' COPY B 



.52^ 



COPYRIGHT, I9O4. 
IY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



* 



FOREWORD. 

^^^HE marching days are beckoning 
g us on in their train, yet though 
- they never arrest their progress, we 

sometimes sit down by the wayside to watch 
and chronicle their passing. The familiar 
talks which are included in this volume were 
originally written for the columns of The 
American Messenger } where they have had 
their first appearance. They touch in simple 
style and modest intention on some phases 
of the life of every day as it is lived in the 
household. Perhaps they will be best fit 
into the leisure of the Sabbath afternoon, 
when tasks are done, and the family group 
are gathered in the pleasant seclusion of the 
rest-day that the Father's love has made a 
gift to his children, week by week. In the 
hope that they may do good in an unobtrusive 
fashion, they are sent on their way to another 
audience of friends and neighbors. 



CONTENTS. 

Chapter. Page. 

I. THE MARCHING DAYS 3 

II. MIDWINTER iy 

III. OUR FRIENDS 29 

IV. A COMMONPLACE SAINT . . . .43 
V. THE THRIFT OF WISE SPENDING . . .57 

VI. A TALENT FOR LOVING 71 

VII. KEEPING ONE'S WORD 85 

VIII. THE PASSING OF GALLANTRY. . . -99 

IX. THE EVERYDAY WOMAN 113 

X. GENTLE FOLK 127 

XL A LENTEN MEDITATION 141 

XII. OUR EASTER JOY 155 

XIII. SUMMER HOLIDAYS 167 

XIV. SUMMER SABBATH KEEPING . . . . l8l 
XV. NEEDLESS CALAMITIES 193 

XVI. PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS 

FLOW 207 

XVII. SHUT-IN FRIENDS 221 

XVIII. AT CHRISTMAS TIME 233 

XIX. A NARROW NECK OF LAND . . . .247 

XX. THE CALL OF THE FUTURE . . . » 26l 



The Marching Days 



" Taking the year together, my dear, 
There isn't more night than day." 




CHAPTER I. 

THE MARCHING DATS. 

G\/ UST one day at a time ! The tempta- 
T" tion, as you and I know, is to forget 
^J this, and carry the burden of anx- 
ious care for a whole year, or a whole life- 
time all at once. How the morrow looms 
up, threatening, menacing, when we are not 
quite well, or the income is inadequate to 
our needs, or the children are crying out for 
everything that children in these days want, 
not only food and raiment, but education 
along special lines, travel, fine opportuni- 
ties, and a good start for a successful 
career. The mother's strength and cour- 
age are exhausted, not in to-day's house- 
wifery, but in foreboding about to-mor- 
row, and the father's head grows griz- 
zled and his back bowed in overwork for his 



4 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

sons, who will not, ten years hence, appreciate 
his toil. The worry that is an affront to a 
gracious Providence, the hurry that lays 
waste our energies and dissipates our physical 
and mental capital, are the offspring of that 
jaded temper which loses the power to 
rebound because it carries dead weight for 
much of the journey. 

Day in and day out! The Lord whose 
goodness has thus appointed our stations for 
labor and for rest, "maketh the outgoings of 
the morning and evening to rejoice." When 
we form the habit of living only one day at a 
time, filling the measure of that single day 
with duties done as to the Lord, rounding the 
circuit of the sun with grateful praise, we 
then tread the pathway of life as victors. 
How much better than as captives, as work- 
men weary of their work, or as slaves cring- 
ing under a taskmaster! It is the part of 
wisdom to take the road lightly, leaving 
behind us whatever luggage will prove cum- 
brous. Some one says, "But how can I help 
myself? I can overcome the disposition to 
undue worry over my own mistakes and 
shortcomings, I can easily leave my personal 



THE MARCHING DAYS. 5 

concerns with my heavenly Father, but when 
the question is of my loved ones, it is more 
complicated. I look into the pallid counte- 
nance of a child, destined to years of inva- 
lidism; I vainly try to arrest the steps of a 
friend who is treading the down grade of 
weakness and sin; I stand utterly helpless 
beside a kinsman handicapped by want, and 
I think what he might do, if money were 
not denied him. How am I to escape depres- 
sion and morbidness, and the wretchedness 
of hope deferred? Talk of taking the road 
lightly to some one else, not to me." 

The obvious answer is that our Lord did 
not limit his command, nor narrow his encour- 
agement to good cheer, when he bade us 
remember that sufficient unto the day is the 
evil thereof. He expressly said, "Fear not, 
little flock. It is the Father's good pleasure 
to give you the kingdom." The kingdom 
of what? Over whatever of earth that can 
hamper, crush or distress us or our precious 
ones. When Jesus sent forth his disciples 
on their first errands of teaching and heal- 
ing, he made them take the road lightly 
weighted, without script, without money, 



6 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

without two coats. We foolishly allow our- 
selves to be encumbered by life's superflui- 
ties, by the things that our fancy longs for, 
the furniture, the clothing, the luxuries, that 
we regard as essentials, but which become a 
source of labor and profitless trouble. Who- 
ever needlessly incurs debt that can be 
avoided, whoever voluntarily lives beyond 
his means, whoever deliberately toils beyond 
his strength for mere material gain, is walk- 
ing encumbered on a road where he might be 
free. Of this encumbrance comes irritability, 
nervous prostration, sleepless nights, and 
dreary moods of dark unrest by noonday's 
light. 

Gray days, white days, rose-hued days, 
swift days and slow days, silent days and days 
of melody, days of mourning and of feast- 
ing, of the desert and the city, and all sorts 
and conditions of days; from Eden until now 
they march in endless procession. Abraham 
knew them, and Isaac and Jacob, Isaiah, 
Ezekiel and Malachi knew them. The 
marching days have witnessed the rise and 
fall of earthly empires, the discovery of new 
worlds, the amazing results of applied 



THE MARCHING DAYS. 7 

science in the latest modern century — the 
rapid progress of missions in the Far East, 
the splendid achievements of art, the increase 
of culture, — these the never-ceasing days 
have watched as they have gone by. 

"Lo, all our pomp of yesterday, 
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre." 

wrote Kipling in his recessional after the 
Queen's great jubilee. Often this thought 
appalls us, when we give it place — the abso- 
lute impossibility of catching the skirts of yes- 
terday, so remote is it, so out of sight and 
beyond touch. Yet elusive as they are in very 
truth we possess our yesterdays and are of 
their warp and woof. The stuff of every yes- 
terday is in our soul, and the child in the 
cradle is the child of the past as really as of 
the present. The days as they have marched 
from the misty region where our great-grand- 
fathers wrought valiantly or failed shame- 
fully have left legacies at our door, and each 
of us inherits something definite and tangible 
from the shadows that lie behind us. 

Among the charming features of the days 
is their quality of unexpectedness, of surprise. 






8 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

A day begins in somberness, but it turns to 
brilliance of scarlet and pomp of gold before 
it is over. A day shines at the window in 
the early dawn. We open the casement. 
The day wears an ordinary face; it gives 
us no hint of radiance beyond the common- 
place uniformity of existence; yet this day 
brings us a new friend, and life is perma- 
nently enriched. To the girl it brings her 
lover, to the man the sweetheart who is to 
be his comrade the rest of the way. Perhaps 
the new day is one of revelation, when we 
become aware of a gift we did not dream we 
had, of a strength hitherto concealed. Or, 
it may be a day of inspiration, a day of 
suddenly kindled enthusiasm, of altogether 
new delight. We often mark a black line 
on our calendar when some great sorrow has 
crossed our path, but do we as often keep 
the tally of the days that brought us spoil, 
that made us happy, that were joyous and 
triumphant, God having made them extra- 
ordinary in the fulness of their peace? It 
is worth while to cultivate a habitual spirit 
of gratitude for the surprises of loving-kind- 
ness that make beautiful our days. 



THE MARCHING DAYS. 9 

One bright afternoon not long ago, I was 
walking on a village street when a woman, 
evidently a mother, passed me wheeling a 
baby carriage. The baby, a little fellow two 
years old or thereabout, was crying in' a bit- 
ter, broken-hearted way that moved me to 
sympathy, but something had angered his 
mother, who was probably ashamed of the 
child's wailing, and she rushed on, pushing 
the carriage hastily before her, eyes flashing, 
lips set in a white line, her whole demeanor 
intensely annoyed and excited. Poor baby! 
I knew that in some way he had vexed his 
mother beyond the point of self-control, and 
I knew as well as if she had told me, that 
she meant to slap him the minute she was 
within her own door. Again, I thought, 
poor baby. Children must be punished, it 
is true, but alas ! for the little ones whose 
parents punish them in anger. The pathway 
of childhood should be much like the foot- 
path that leads through a meadow with 
flowers on either hand. Too much repression, 
too many dont's, too many thoughtless pro- 
hibitions, and far too much penalty, are the 
portion of childish life in households where 



10 



THE DAILY PATHWAY. 



parental ambition, or parental ill-humor, or 
honestly mistaken parental love, make child- 
hood's path a hard one to tread. The 
little feet must be taught obedience, the 
little hands trained in all gentle service, 
the youthful will directed in the right way; 
but this may be done without injustice, with- 
out prejudice, and without too many tears. 
Wounded parental vanity is responsible for 
some childish suffering. Oftener than fathers 
and mothers think, they are the immediate 
cause of their children's forwardness, what 
with foolish indulgence on one hand, and 
foolish tyranny on the other. 

The daily life of childhood should by 
insensible pressure mould our sons and daugh- 
ters into the shape of noblest manhood and 
womanhood. One step at a time, one hour 
at a time, one thought at a time, and ere 
we know it, childhood has gone, and the 
period of mature life and responsibility has 
arrived — the youth's flowery path across the 
fragrant pasture land, the broader by-road of 
school and college, the thronging avenues of 
endeavor, and the king's highway trodden 
by many feet. Then follows a quieter foot- 



THE MARCHING DAYS. n 

path, leading down to a dark, deep river, on 
the farther side of which gleam the lights 
of home. So time glides into eternity. 

On the day of his marriage, a man, now 
aged, gave his young wife a watch, on the 
inner case of which had been engraved the 
familiar couplet, 

"Taking the year together, my dear, 
There isn't more night than day." 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, the pendulum swings 
backward and forward, and there is, so to 
speak, an evening up of circumstances. After 
long years, whoever looks back on the course 
that has been traversed will notice how won- 
derfully fair has been the average of the 
lot. Though to some, or to all, there have 
come occasional griefs and heartaches, there 
have been continual mercies granted and 
endless is the tale of daily joy. Most of us 
with the Psalmist must ever exclaim "the 
lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places. 
I have a goodly heritage." 

Though we live only one heart-beat at a 
time, our ideals should flame before us, as the 
stars in the sky. Contentment with our 



12 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

environment and satisfaction with ourselves 
are very different states of mind. To rest 
in supine indifference on a low plane is to 
ally our natures to beings that creep and 
crawl. Wings should be the aspiration of 
the immortal spirit. To follow after a high 
ideal is to live as the apostle did, whose 
letters to the early disciples are still our man- 
uals of daily practice and devotion. Having 
done all, to stand, was the saintly rule of 
Paul, but in order to do all there was a 
pattern to be imitated. That pattern was 
set us by our blessed Saviour in his simple, 
unselfish and sinless life upon earth. 

Imitating Jesus, how we learn to forget 
the glamour of pride and put on the humility 
of little children. Some there are so like 
the Master in their daily lives that children 
run to them, confident of a welcome, expec- 
tant of a benediction. Some there are who 
keep to the last day of life and to four- 
score and beyond, the sweet docility and fear- 
less trust of the child at the mother's knee. 
Imitating Jesus, how careful we are to min- 
ister to his little ones; how we seek our 
Father in prayer, how we study the word 



THE MARCHING DAYS. 13 

of God. Imitating Jesus, how we go out into 
the wilderness to seek the little lost lamb and 
bring it back into the shelter of the fold. 

"Spring will follow, the spring of revival, 
the spring of hope, the spring of vivid bloom 
and promise." 



Midwinter 



M 



11 Spring will follow, the spring of revival, the 
spring of hope, the spring of vivid bloom and 
promise." 




CHAPTER II. 

MIDWINTER. 

rHE days are at their shortest dur- 
ing the holiday season which cul- 
minates with the New Year. Jan- 
uary first slips over the threshold, and we 
signalize the advent of another twelve month 
with joyful ringing of bells, firing cannon, 
and exchange of friendly greetings, and then 
we straightway find ourselves in the most 
strenuous period of the annual round. So 
much to do and so little daylight in which 
to do it! But we have the long evenings 
and the pleasant social gatherings, the charm 
of the home circle around the lighted hearth, 
and the feeling of being safely sheltered 
when the storms rage outside. Winter is 
not a season of unrelieved gloom. It is a 
time of pressure and of much activity, of 



1 8 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

getting ready for the future too, as Nature 
does. In her midwinter days, when the 
fields are shorn and the trees are bare, and 
the birds are flown, life is not gone. It is 
merely for a moment hushed, and its outward 
expression has in a measure ceased. In a 
thousand subtle ways winter is always getting 
ready for spring. 

Following this analogy, we find that in 
the sternest, most relentless and rigorous 
period of the year, especially in our church 
life, comes the most pronounced effort and 
the greatest energy. Unlike Nature, it is not 
voiceless, however, though whatever is best in 
the spiritual realm is never obtrusive, and 
never thrusts itself on the beholder's notice. 
There is this about it, that meetings and 
preachings and personal work are all value- 
less unless accompanied by searchings of the 
heart in the closet, by the continuance of 
God's people in fervent prayer, and by con- 
tinual study of the Word. "Not by might, 
nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the 
Lord." 

In these white days of winter, when the 
drifts lie deep on the meadows and the 



MIDWINTER. 19 

streams are frozen, the little country prayer- 
meetings are centers of spiritual power for 
the church. *No suspension of life there ! No 
iron hand of frost and cold on the warm 
throbbing hearts that call upon God. The 
little processions over the hills to prayer-meet- 
ing, men carrying lanterns, women plodding 
over snowy roads, are pledges of a renewal 
of spring-time bounty for the church every- 
where. So with the groups that gather in 
the city chapels and parish houses, in the mid- 
dle of the week to praise and pray. So long 
as Christians thus assemble, in devout con- 
templation, in hallowed song, and in con- 
certed petition, making their requests known 
unto God, no wintry desolation will ever 
freeze the church. Spring will follow, the 
spring of revival, the spring of hope, the 
spring of vivid bloom and promise. All over 
the Christian world, in the beginning of Jan- 
uary, men and women are keeping a week of 
prayer. 

What are they praying for? Primarily 
for the conversion of the world. We are 
living in a period of intense conviction, and of 
intense endeavor. We are realizing that 



20 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Satan's kingdom must fall, and the kingdom 
of our Lord and Saviour triumph. Some of 
us are doing what we can to help onward 
the coming of that joyful day, when Christ 
shall indeed have the kingdoms of this world 
under his glorious sway, the heathen for his 
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
earth for his possession. All of us can help 
in this magnificent campaign, help by prayer, 
letting the world's Week of Prayer be for 
us the opening to more definite praying in 
our own daily lives. 

"More love to thee, O Christ, more love to thee!" 

we cry, and as we feel the tides of love to 
our Redeemer flowing over the waste places 
of our souls, we presently learn that we love 
his lost ones more. We are anxious to help 
him seek for those who have gone astray. 
Fast on our prayers hasten our gifts. It can- 
not be that a Christian disciple can pray in 
downright deep earnest, and then withhold 
time, thought, silver, gold, anything from 
the One who was wounded for our trans- 
gressions and bruised for our iniquities. 
Shall we not expect with confidence that the 



MIDWINTER. 21 

coming year may bring us "new supplies of 
grace," new assurance of our Saviour's pres- 
ence, new desires to be of use in his work, 
and new evidences of his love? The prayers 
of the midwinter days should hallow all the 
coming time. 

"I don't know how many times I have 
smiled at the futility of making good reso- 
lutions at the New Year," said a woman, 
opening a fresh diary, on the clean pages 
of which she expected to write a record from 
day to day. "Yet," she added, "I go on 
doing it just the same." 

"And do you not keep them?" said her 
friend. 

"Well, yes, for a little while, but the 
novelty wears off and I slip back into the old 
worn grooves. For example, I am very 
impulsive and impetuous, and am apt to speak 
hastily and with too much heat and vehe- 
mence. I greatly admire poise and serenity 
and a calm composed demeanor. So, when 
I say 'A Happy New Year' to my family, 
I am inwardly determined that I will do my 
best to make it so. I dislike my tendency to 
exaggeration and fussing, to pressing my own 



22 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

way on other people. I start in January try- 
ing to imitate some very quiet and controlled 
person, trying to be soft-voiced and lovely, 
but before February comes, I forget all about 
it. I am just my old boisterous, clamorous 
self underneath, and my old, eager impa- 
tient self outside." 

"I am not sure," said the friend, "that 
your resolves are in the line the Lord approves 
of. When he makes a pansy, he does not 
want it to be a chrysanthemum, and he does 
not require the eagle to be a dove. Each 
after its kind is his rule. He gave you the 
swift, impulsive disposition, the readiness in 
action, the rush and stir that belong to you, 
as a personality. Of you, he asks the conse- 
cration of what you have, not of what you 
have not. Isn't there too much imitation on 
our part of others, and maybe not enough 
acceptance of ourselves as his workmanship? 
I do think it right to make good resolutions, 
but I think the better way is to ask for 

' 'The daily strength 
To none that ask denied.' 

Just to take each moment as it comes, a gift 
from our dear Lord's hand, and to take each 



MIDWINTER. 23 

sin and blunder and blemish as they come, and 
beg his pardon, and then to go on, is the 
wiser way. If we do resolve, should we not 
do so with God's help ?" 

The friend stopped talking. She had been 
a learner in God's school, taught by the dis- 
cipline of sorrow. The lady to whom she 
spoke made a record in her new diary. It 

was — U F has been a great help to me. 

She brought me a message from the King. 
I shall try, with his blessing, to serve him 
well this year, day by day, being myself and 
not another, and humbly trying to do his 
will. 

"Content to fill a little place 
If he be glorified.' " 

Some of us long in these first hours of the 
year to do good, but our sphere is obscure and 
our powers are limited. 

Is there, therefore, nothing that we can do? 
By no means. The little things at hand are 
to be done by God's people as if they were 
great things. In his esteem nothing is little, 
nothing great. He demands only that his ser- 
vants be found continually faithful. 



24 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

We may send good literature as we have 
opportunity to those who have it not and 
cannot procure it. Our papers that are 
clean and whole, when they have been read 
by the family, should be passed on to other 
readers, to hospitals, army posts, and prisons. 
If practicable, we may send a favorite peri- 
odical to a missionary at home or abroad, 
or to an invalid shut in from the bustling 
world. By a trifling self-denial, we may sub- 
scribe for an extra paper, or buy a book, 
and send it to some one to whose thirsty soul 
it will be as a cup of cold water in a desert 
march. 

If we cultivate plants, we may watch for 
opportunities when a flower will carry com- 
fort to some one in deep sorrow. 

If we have a little time at our disposal, 
we may relieve a burdened mother by caring 
for her children while she, as a rare treat, 
gets to church, either on the Sabbath, or 
to a mid-week meeting. If we sing, we may 
cheer an invalid by the sweetness of our songs. 
I once knew a woman who for seventeen years 
lay on her bed in a room over a cobbler's 
shop, her one glimpse of the world outside 



MIDWINTER. 25 

being from a window which commanded a 
street corner. It was a very quiet street and 
she saw very little, but it meant much to hen 
On Sunday afternoons, a sweet young girl, 
with a voice like a flute, used to go to this 
cell where God's prisoner lay in captivity, 
and she sang to her of heaven. Both are 
there now, where the unending chorals of 
the redeemed are lifted up to the praise of the 
Lord, and there is no more sickness, nor 
any heartache. 

We may find some little ministry to the 
old. Aged people are often neglected 
through the thoughtlessness of busy younger 
folk, whose intentions are kind, but whose 
minds are preoccupied. They can hardly 
crowd into the narrow compass of a short 
winter's day all that they really ought to 
accomplish, and they overlook the slowness 
with which hours creep by when people, once 
active, are laid aside through infirmity. Deaf- 
ness is a great burden to the aged. No lovelier 
ministry can be found than the commonplace 
one of talking intelligibly and audibly to, not 
shouting at, a deaf person, who longs to hear, 
and is outside of everything simply because 



26 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

the ears are closed to most ordinary 
sounds. 

We may be eyes to the blind, as never 
before. Simply to read to some one who 
cannot read for herself, may be an errand 
of love in this glad new year. 

The chief thing is to be ready for any 
little service the Lord appoints, and to do 
it heartily as unto him. 

Oh, for the sunny optimism that finds 
everything good because God sends it. 

"Some murmur when their sky is clear 

And wholly bright to view, 
If one small speck of dark appear 

In their great heaven of blue. 
And some with thankful love are filled 

If but one streak of light, 
One ray of God's good mercy gild 

The darkness of their night." 

To cultivate a habit of looking on the 
bright side, to do away with the evil habit of 
worry, to listen for the angelic harmonies, 
and to do angel's work in this earth of ours, 
will make a Happy New Year. 



Our Friends 



" Paupers in friendship are more to be pitied 
than those who have little earthly wealth." 




CHAPTER III. 

OUR FRIENDS. 

TJff HEN the patriarch Job was 

y y crushed under the successive blows 
of terrible and sweeping calam- 
ity, his three friends came to condole with 
and comfort him. In this ancient drama 
of misfortune no description is finer or 
more eloquent than that of the friends hear- 
ing of all the evil that had come upon the 
patriarch, leaving each his own place, and 
making an appointment to go together to 
Job. 

"And when they lifted up their eyes afar 
off and knew him not, they lifted up their 
voice and wept; and they rent every one his 
mantle and sprinkled dust upon their heads 
toward heaven. So they sat down with him 
upon the ground seven days and seven nights 



3 o THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

and none spoke a word unto him, for they 
saw that his grief was very great." 

Mute companionship in sorrow, the sym- 
pathy of the personal presence — from the far- 
off days of Job until now, friendship has 
found no better expression of fellow-feeling 
than this. Until the three friends began to 
talk and remonstrate and advise and com- 
mend, they made no mistake. 

As they sat in silence they were messengers 
of consolation. After they began to talk they 
blundered, and provoked from the suffering 
Job the most exquisite irony of literature in 
his retort, "Doubtless ye are the people, and 
wisdom shall die with you !" 

Our friends make up a very large part of 
our lives. That is a poverty-stricken life, and 
a pitifully narrow home, which has in it no 
room for friendship. Not one of us can 
afford to be independent of our kind. We 
need and want friends, and in any event 
which for the moment disturbs the daily rou- 
tine, or lifts us to another than the daily 
plane, we turn instinctively to our friends, for 
their opinion, their approbation, or their 
comradeship. Some by reason of individual 



OUR FRIENDS. 31 

charm or magnetic manner, or graceful 
speech, make friends more readily than 
others. It is a great gift that of attaching 
people easily, following upon a recognized 
attractiveness that draws and never repels. 
In business it assists a man to success. The 
physician endowed with it is beloved by his 
patients, and his praises are sung far and 
wide. When the minister has this fine endow- 
ment, he is sure of popularity. Consecrated, 
no element of character carries with it more 
of power and does more visible good than 
this talent for affection which aids a man in 
making and keeping friends. 

You may be disposed to question it, but I 
have no hesitation in declaring that one's 
friends often know one very much more truly 
and weigh one more justly than do one's rela- 
tions. Kinsfolk — and the nearer the blood 
tie, the truer this is — often have a precon- 
ceived notion of a person who has grown up 
under their eyes that is very far from being a 
right notion. It is quite possible to be mis- 
understood in one's own household, as one 
cannot be in the world beyond one's doors. 
Your relatives take for granted a certain line 



32 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

of conduct on your part and would be sur- 
prised at any other. Of the motives that ac- 
tuate you, the principles that guide you, the 
rules that govern you, relatives are sometimes 
profoundly ignorant, and to them all they 
may be profoundly indifferent. This is not 
invariably the case. Happily, there are fami- 
lies of one heart and mind on all great ques- 
tions, and of a swift comprehension and intui- 
tive sympathy that may always be relied on 
to bear any strain. In friendship, however, 
especially in close and vital friendship, there 
has been choice, the coming together of con- 
genial people, and the gradual welding of a 
bond that death itself, for the Christian, need 
not break. 

Job's three friends were anxious to be at 
his side when he was grieved, shorn of wealth, 
robbed of a great estate and bereft of his 
children. There was the impulse of love to 
go to him in the hour of sweeping disaster; 
at least to share his hour of darkness. The 
story is the most ancient in history. Yet it is 
as modern as this morning. 

When to any one among our circle of 
friends there comes, here and now, a sorrow, 



OUR FRIENDS. 33 

a shock, the suspense in a dear one's illness, 
the bewilderment of loss, the pain of loneli- 
ness, we do not stay away. We go to the 
shadowed home and sit there and are com- 
forters, in proportion as we suffer with our 
friend, and halve his load by bearing it with 
him. 

A little while ago, a dear woman, whose 
whole life had been an outgoing of sympathy 
to those she loved, whose heart was a palace 
with many doors, went suddenly home to 
God. Her departure eclipsed the joy of a 
very w T ide circle of friends who knew not how 
to do without her cheery presence. In a let- 
ter written about her, after her home-going, 
occurred this expression : 

"It was not singular that she could sympa- 
thize so really with those who had trials, for 
she had known so much sorrow herself, but 
the marvel was the quickness of her sym- 
pathy with those who were young and light- 
hearted and hopeful." 

I think there is a chord here which vibrates 
to music. Here is unselfishness that forgets 
its personal account, and, in the midst of its 
own heartache, sends flowers to the wedding, 



34 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

a little note of cheer to a departing traveler, 
felicitations on the birth of a child, a word 
of appreciation when a neighbor's son has 
taken a prize or an honor at college. This 
peculiar form of lovely altruism makes a 
friend most winsome. The friend who stands 
on the wharf and waves good-by to the happy 
group on shipboard, goes cheerfully back to 
his work in the office and settles down to the 
accustomed grind; the woman whose earthly 
joy is over, and whose pleasures are in mem- 
ory and not in anticipation, slips out of self- 
absorption into the sweetness of the bride's 
rose-colored day ; and the childless parent, the 
one who lost his own lad in babyhood, re- 
joices when another lad, who might have been 
his, sets out finely on the road that leads to 
usefulness and success. Every such unselfish 
act adds to the sum of joy in the world, and 
helps to lessen its friction and lighten the 
weight of its burdens. 

For you and me, here is a thought of some 
importance. What are we worth to our 
friends? Of how much use? Are we im- 
pressing them by our sincerity, uplifting them 
by our hope, sustaining them by our faith? 



OUR FRIENDS. 35 

Reverently and gratefully we acknowledge 
our indebtedness to dear friends whose min- 
istrations enrich our lives, but, as friends our- 
selves, how much are we doing to bless and 
save others? 

First, we are of most value to our friends 
and associates when we are making no con- 
scious effort, that is to say, that our simple 
living, to the best and highest ends, our sim- 
ple being what we ought in the daily round, 
assists others without intention. It is like the 
distinction between manner and manners. 
The one is the revelation of the inner life, the 
expression of the soul; it is character, per- 
sonality. The other is more like dress that 
may be assumed or laid off at will. One may 
have careful manners, the result of training 
and attention to etiquette, and have an un- 
fortunate manner, showing lack of breeding 
and an unhappy environment in childhood. 
Manner is always involuntary. Manners are 
often studied. Charm is the concrete result 
of manner, or the reverse is true ; and so, fol- 
lowing this analogy, we discern how we may 
add sweetness and courage to those about us, 
when we are least purposing to produce an 



3 6 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

effect of any kind. Or equally we may de- 
press and injure when we do not mean to do 
either, and so be foes instead of friends. 

One day set apart for the service and 
claims of friendship is more than most of us 
can often spare, but a few minutes in every 
day might well be devoted to making some 
lonely or suffering one brighter or easier. A 
purse full of gold may not be ours to bestow, 
but who is too poor to give a golden thought? 
If we are but full of desire, how the fruitage 
of our lives will grow in those things which 
love estimates as of more worth than houses 
or lands. 

Second, and this may come home to some 
with peculiar force, we are useful to our 
friends when we make direct efforts to de- 
velop and influence them, especially when we 
recognize their shortcomings and needs. 
Here an almost unerring delicacy of percep- 
tion is requisite. As a rule it is unsafe and 
ungracious to tell a friend of his or her faults. 
In certain relations, as of parents and chil- 
dren, teachers and pupils, it is permissible 
and expected, and can awaken no resentment, 
but if a friend in gentlest candor ventures to 



OUR FRIENDS. 37 

criticise or reprove another friend, the at- 
mosphere is chilled. The spontaneity and 
bloom vanish. Most people are sensitive to a 
hair's breadth when one invades their amour 
propre. So, we are not among our friends to 
constitute ourselves censors, or to go about 
with brusque plainness, mentioning what has 
seemed to us amiss. 

There is a more excellent way. It is found 
whenever and wherever one lives so near 
Christ that he or she is not afraid to bring 
every small matter of daily intercourse to the 
test of his approval. Then, when oppor- 
tunity comes, as come it must, there is no re- 
luctance in saying what one thinks and feels, 
and no fear of wounding when one tries to 
lead a friend to shape conduct by the Mas- 
ter's standard. 

Third, let us strive for a wide range of in- 
terests in friendship. Catholicity in friend- 
ship is to be desired. When we restrict our 
friends to those of similar social conditions 
and upbringing with ourselves, we are of 
necessity limited in our comprehension of 
humanity at large. Why must we have 
among our friends only those who read the 



38 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

same books, attend the same church, hear the 
same music, have the same round of duties 
and pleasures, and generally fulfill the same 
order of obligations — those whose groove is 
like our own? In a certain sense our inti- 
macies must be colored by this identification 
of interests and pursuits, but there are circles 
in friendship and degrees of affectionate con- 
fidence, and of limitation comes dullness and 
monotony. I see no reason why the maid in 
the kitchen and the man who daily calls for 
the grocer's order, and the expressman who 
brings parcels, and the station agent from 
whom one's commutation ticket is purchased, 
should not each be a friend. 

Underlying all our relations to friends, if 
friendship is to be permanent, must be a true 
and firm devotion to the best friend we can 
have. Our Lord has called us friends, 
therefore none who are his in the same bond 
can be indifferent to us. Where shall we look 
for his friends ? Where shall we not discover 
them? In the Home for Old People, often 
unhomelike, because of its inevitable infelici- 
ties, we may sit down by some aged one from 
whom joys and hopes have fallen like with- 



OUR FRIENDS. 39 

cred leaves from a tree, and there will be the 
common love to Christ, giving sunshine and 
peace, and sending us forth strengthened. 
On the journey where we are thrown with 
strangers, on shipboard, on the train that 
forges across the continent, and in the sani- 
tarium, where we meet those who are search- 
ing for renovation and health; in the house 
of mourning and in the house of feasting, 
among the learned and the illiterate, we may 
meet Christ's friends and know them because 
they wear his likeness and because they are 
going home to him. 

Paupers in friendship are more to be pitied 
than those who have little earthly wealth. In 
making ready for life, let it not be forgotten 
that "the man that hath friends must show 
himself friendly." The alphabet of earthly 
success is in this habit and talent, and it takes 
hold, too, upon immortality, if we cling to 
that Friend who sticketh closer than a 
brother. 



A Commonplace Saint 

M 

M She was a saint without dreaming it, for she 
simpl j lived day by day without a thought of self . " 




CHAPTER IV. 

A COMMONPLACE SAINT 

/HAVE been groping about lately 
among the lives of the saints. I find 
that in mediaeval days many of the 
most saintly people revealed their character 
and asserted their claim by a forgoing of 
worldly comfort, and a scorn of luxury. In 
rags, if not in dirt, they walked up and down 
the earth; they did some kind and self-deny- 
ing deeds, but their tempers were not always 
gentle, nor was their demeanor marked by 
self-control. Asceticism and fretfulness are 
not invariably divorced, and no man or 
woman was ever saintly simply through the 
medium of external sacrifice. As a rule, the 
old saints were deficient in common-sense, a 
saving grace that when allied with mysticism 
produces excellent results. 



44 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Thinking of the barefoot monks and veiled 
nuns who thought saintliness was to be at- 
tained by mortification of the flesh, my mind 
was led along a backward path, until I re- 
membered a commonplace woman whose 
earthly experience was diversified by many 
sorrows, but who held on her course bravely, 
seeing him who was invisible. She was a 
real saint. 

It was not her Father's will that this child 
of his love should ever have an easy time in 
this mortal portion of her life. I have always 
felt that for her the joys were laid up; that 
when the hour of departure came she entered 
into wealth and beauty, and charm and re- 
pose, all in contrast with what she struggled 
with in her days in this lower class-room. 
The problems and tasks here were always 
hard, but she met them undaunted, and with a 
faith that knew no wavering. 

To how many, many things she set her 
capable and most efficient hand! She had a 
large family, but she taught every one of her 
children to read, and each of the little tribe 
early learned by heart many chapters of the 
Bible. The mother, busy over her sewing or 



A COMMONPLACE SAINT. 45 

her cooking, would prop a book in front of 
her and hear a lesson, or with her foot on the 
baby's cradle, would explain what was puz- 
zling to the older child who had the next day's 
school work to do. Sometimes there were 
boarders to increase the size of the family. 
Sometimes the store, which was its main de- 
pendence, was not doing very well, and the 
clerk had to be dismissed. Then this busy 
housemother would go at intervals to keep 
the books, or wait on customers, and on 
Saturday evenings the year round she was 
found behind the counter. 

I remember once hearing one of her sons 
say, when the brood had grown and most of 
them had taken flight from the nest, "My 
mother is the best and bravest and brightest 
woman I ever saw." 

A young minister, not long out of the sem- 
inary, had preached a sermon on the sisters at 
Bethany, disparaging Martha, as I am sure 
the Master never did. My old friend's son 
listened with a whimsical expression of pro- 
test on his face. As we walked home from 
church he observed, "That young man never 
had the advantage of an acquaintance with 



46 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

my mother. She has been a Martha all her 
days — some women have to be — but she's 
been a Mary too, sitting at Jesus' feet." 

A commonplace saint! Are there not 
many such going quietly about the work of 
the kitchen and the parlor, themselves unseen 
forces, making smooth the paths of others? 
God recognizes their worth, and often gives 
them to eat of the hidden manna. 

From what springs is every-day religion 
nourished so that it vitally affects and re- 
veals life? How may you and I so dwell that 
we unconsciously illustrate the beauty of holi- 
ness? The question is a pertinent one, and 
the emphasis must be put on the adverb, for 
the instant one is conscious of effort, the value 
of the example is lost and the picture is 
blurred. To show forth our Lord, we must 
actually abide where he does. Aye! there 
must be something yet more intimate than 
this. To the Christ lover 

"Closer is he than breathing, 
Nearer than hands and feet." 

He must live in our souls, and we must live 
in him. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of 
itself, except it abide in the vine, no more 



A COMMONPLACE SAINT. 47 

can ye, except ye abide in me." The person 
who longs unutterably to be like Christ, and 
to so live that the Christ temper will be in 
him or her, will be often engaged in prayer; 
there will never be the thing too small to 
carry to the Saviour; never the thing too 
great to consult him about, and the times for 
prayer will not be set times merely; not the 
two ends of the day, the beginning and the 
close alone, but there will be little blessed 
spaces all along the day, marked with a white 
stone; there will be little visits of a moment 
or a half hour when the heart will feel that 
its Beloved is sustaining it; there will be the 
sweetness that needs no words to translate, 
the friendship that dares like the dearest dis- 
ciple to lay its head on the Master's breast 
and pillow its unrest and its fears and its sad- 
ness there. And thus leaning, fears will fly 
away, sadness will be changed into rapture, 
and unrest will become repose and refresh- 
ment. One who lives in intimacy with Christ 
will show forth his goodness and win others 
to him, because Christ in a human soul is 
always potential. We are not saintly, we do 
not invest our commonplace duties and our 



48 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

commonplace homes with beauty because we 
are too far away from Christ. 

We may be commonplace without being 
saints. There is no special merit in that. Do 
not let us make the blunder of supposing that 
there is any particular grace in wearing old 
clothes, or living in an ugly environment, or 
in possessing brusque and repellent manners. 
When we plume ourselves on any deficiency, 
or are vain of any lack, we show plainly the 
narrowness of our outlook, the short-sighted- 
ness of our view-point. Plenty of people 
never climb out of the dullness of most or- 
dinary lives because they imagine there is vir- 
tue in the fact of their narrowness. I once 
heard a woman excuse herself for her dislike 
to every variety of Christian work on the 
score of her extreme devotion to her family. 
"I have no time," she explained, "for mis- 
sionary meetings and prayer-meetings. I 
spend my whole life in making John and the 
children comfortable. " Naturally the home 
life of John and the children was in a barrel, 
a roomy, clean, most luxurious sort of a bar- 
rel, but only a barrel at the best. They had 
pies and cakes and clean linen, and a spotless 



A COMMONPLACE SAINT. 49 

house, and not one aim beyond being respect- 
able, and not one impulse toward liberality, 
and not one scintilla of knowledge about the 
Lord's kingdom, nor a gleam of interest in 
what was going on in the great world beyond 
their doors. A commonplace mother who is 
not a saint is in danger of degenerating into 
the drudge of the home instead of ascending 
its throne and becoming its queen. 

One may be a drudge though servants wait 
on her; if she have the drudge's temper, she 
will not escape that fate. No household is 
permanently benefited by a mother who 
spends herself exclusively for its material ad- 
vantage. A less careful, less successful 
worker along the lower lines, if she have 
spirituality and broad sympathies and a 
wholesome intellectual and keen religious life, 
will do more for her children than the other. 
For the life is more than meat, and the body 
than raiment. 

The true saintliness takes note of the things 
that are nearest. It is a great temptation to 
us to fancy what we would do if we had 
larger opportunity, more money, knew more 
people, had a better education or were placed 



SO THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

anywhere except in obscurity, where nobody 
can see us or hear us. Dear friends, the can- 
dle that shines in the window in the little 
cabin on the seashore or down the lane gives 
as much light and is as beautiful as if it 
glowed in a palace. In the latter it might be 
less valuable. It is more necessary where it 
shines in a poor place for wayfarers on a dark 
road or in a fishing boat on a dark wave, to 
catch its golden gleam. Our duty is to shine. 
Where we are, God has set us. There let us 
shine for him. 

Often we fail to comprehend the greatness 
of an opportunity that is very near at hand. 
Our own brother may be grappling with the 
adversary. Our own child may be slipping 
down a road that leads to perdition. Our 
next-door neighbor may be encumbered with 
cares, some of which we might lift. Our 
maid in the kitchen may be in sore need of a 
helping and sympathetic hand. The blun- 
ders that we commit through not realizing that 
the people who surround us are in need, in 
peril, in straits; that they are interesting and 
worth cultivating and worth assisting, are be- 
yond calculation. But our worst mistakes are 



A COMMONPLACE SAINT. 51 

made when we look with aversion or con- 
tempt on some one who has not our standards, 
or who has not been trained as we have, and 
refuse to be neighborly and loving and gentle 
because we do not live on just the same plane. 
How mean and ignoble and unchristian are 
sentiments of contempt toward any who may 
come within our ken, whatever their color, 
race or condition. Those for whom Christ 
died are not those whom Christ's disciples can 
scorn. 

Good people are sometimes so fearful that 
they may be suspected of Pharisaism that they 
do not avow their doctrine of Christ-living as 
fearlessly as otherwise they might. Why 
should any seek to hide the fact that for him 
piety is as much the end of endeavor as learn- 
ing, or renown, or riches is the goal of an- 
other. The commonplace saint who gave me 
the text of this talk, as I thought of her gentle 
and fruitful life, made it very clear to all who 
knew her that love to God was the first thing 
in her life. She was brave in physical suf- 
fering, cheerful in untoward circumstances, 
ready with alms giving, faithful to every ob- 
ligation, because back of everything was a 



52 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

strong indwelling motive, love to God. That 
made love to the neighbor easy. And she was 
a saint without dreaming it, for she simply 
lived day by day without a thought of self. 
She spoke often of Jesus, often of his good- 
ness and the wonderful things in his word, 
and never once shrunk from such speech, lest 
some one should sneeringly accuse her of over- 
pietism. 

One of the blissful features of my friend's 
character was her readiness to be pleased with 
little things, and to see the fun in the daily 
course of the home. Some people are born 
without the blessed insight which separates 
fun from the happenings of the hour, as the 
cream rises to the top of the milk. I am 
sorry for those who have no innate sense of 
humor. Such a sense is a great help. To 
appreciate fun, to sweeten all bitterness with 
mirth, to brighten as well as to benefit the 
lives of others, is to command our Christi- 
anity in a very saintly fashion. That is a 
flawed ideal which would make every-day re- 
ligion somber, cheerless, reproachful, grave, 
a thing from which children run away. The 
twentieth-century disciple should be the hap- 



A COMMONPLACE SAINT. 53 

piest being on earth, a person so radiant that 
out of the cold, dark, cheerless world every 
one will hasten to him for warmth and light. 
If we are to be saints most of us must find 
the sphere of our efforts in very homely 
places. In the school-room where we study 
or teach, in the shop where we buy or sell, in 
the house where we sit at meals, on Monday 
as on Sunday, on the street as in pew or pul- 
pit, in the common ruts where we daily walk, 
we may be missionaries of Jesus Christ, if wc 
spend saintly lives in his service. 



The Thrift of Wise Spending 



" Our economy should not lose sight of per- 
manence, and character-building should be of 
greater account in our sight than present ease or 
present prosperity." 




CHAPTER V. 

THE THRIFT OF WISE 
SPENDING. 

rHE desire to save for one's children is 
among the most natural and praise- 
worthy of parental instincts. All 
fathers and mothers who wish to see their 
houses built on something firmer than mere 
shifting sand, try as they can, at what cost of 
labor and self-denial they care not, to make 
some provision for the rainy day. That day 
may come at any moment, come with sudden 
surprise or with specific warning, come with 
a business reverse, a financial crisis in the 
community, a long illness or the loss of the 
bread-winner. It is the part of discretion to 
be, to some extent, fortified against whatever 
it may bring. 

Unfortunately, they who save too stead- 
ily and persistently sometimes overlook 



58 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

the fact that frugality has more than one 
aspect, that economy has more than one 
phase. 

A thrift of wise spending is as essential to 
the excellent and altogether successful bring- 
ing up of children as the reverse, a painstak- 
ing economy of means and money, can possi- 
bly be. 

For example: In some families there is 
not one penny expended in the course of any 
twelve months for a supply of good reading 
in the household. Books slip into the house 
by the back door. Friends occasionally 
bestow them as birthday or holiday gifts. 
Occasionally a guest leaves a book that he or 
she has brought and does not wish to take 
away. The daughter borrows a volume or 
two from a neighbor. The son picks up a 
newspaper abandoned in a public conveyance. 
The whole intelligence of the daily or 
weekly paper, in other words, the whole 
current history of the world in this won- 
derful age, comes to some people, not 
especially poor, through the gleaning after 
other people who drop their papers in cars 



THRIFT OF WISE SPENDING. 59 

and boats when they have finished reading 
them. 

This is mistake number one. In every 
household lifted above want there should be 
connection with the living, moving, breathing 
world of men, through the medium of the 
newspaper. Nor is this enough. As the 
spiritual nature needs feeding and strengthen- 
ing, there should be as well a religious paper, 
coming with its inspiration of hope and faith, 
its love of Christ and of humanity, into the 
sanctuary of the home, read by parents, read 
by children, discussed at the fireside, and 
passed on to other hands when all are done 
with it. 

A thrift of wise spending, too, dictates an 
annual subscription to a good library, if no 
free library be near; or, instead, the discreet 
and carefully considered purchase from time 
to time of good books for the household. 
Singularly, people who are most generous in 
buying flour and meat and furniture and fuel 
and raiment, are often niggardly when the 
question is one of buying books. Even 
school-books seem to them inexcusably expen- 



60 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

sive, and books of reference, of historical 
value, of pure literature, are regarded as 
luxuries for the rich or the lavish, not necessi- 
ties in every refined and cultured home. Yet 
books there ought to be in every house where 
there are children, as indispensable in their 
mental growth as the food they eat at the 
table, and as much considered among the 
family requisites as the shoes they wear on 
the daily road to school or play. The young 
people who live where books are a part of 
what they daily see and daily hear, absorb 
culture of the best kind with every breath they 
draw. 

I have been reading to-day a little book, 
a wife's tender tribute to a very noble hus- 
band. Mr. Edward Perkins Clark, a dis- 
tinguished journalist, passed away, to the 
grief and loss of many friends, a year ago at 
his home in Brooklyn. Among other things 
more or less suggestive, Mrs. Clark mentions 
her husband's habit of discussing matters at 
home with perfect fairness and candor. She 
says, "In his home during the constant discus- 
sions in progress there, chiefly upon social and 
political subjects, he never failed to admit to 



THRIFT OF WISE SPENDING. 61 

every argument of the opposition in full 
weight. 

"The training in debating which every 
member of his family received during these in- 
cessant, always earnest, but on his part always 
dispassionate discussions, is gratefully ac- 
knowledged by them as the chief influence for 
such success as they may ever have in logical 
thinking." 

I have quoted this extract because too many 
of us inevitably lose self-control and grow 
heated and exasperated whenever we engage 
in argument, ceasing to approach the subject 
in hand with calmness and equanimity, and 
because, also, too many of us never take the 
least trouble to argue about or even mention 
themes of grave concern with the young peo- 
ple in our households. One reason why good 
talkers are few, and vocabularies meager; 
why conversation as a game of give and take 
in fairness and freedom is on the decline, is 
because the men and women who know, who 
feel, who can express knowledge and feeling 
tersely and forcibly, do not trouble them- 
selves to do so in the home arena. There is 
an outflowing of personality that is always a 



62 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

thrifty form of wise spending for the good of 
others. 

Hospitality flourishes best in new countries. 
As we increase in luxury and have more mod- 
ern conveniences around us, we cease to throw 
wide our doors that the friend and the 
stranger may come in. Once every home had 
its guest chamber. Hospitality is of great 
antiquity. Abraham hastened to welcome 
strangers, and thus entertained angels. The 
Shunamite woman fitted up the prophet's 
chamber with the requisites still covering all 
essentials — a bed, a stove, and a candlestick. 
We do not need lace quilts and pillow slips, 
nor elaborate furnishings, that we may have a 
guest room, but in our present scheme of life 
and our crowded quarters we have not enough 
rooms for the family, and so there is literally 
no spare room for a visitor. Nevertheless by 
some contrivance, some good planning, some 
self-denial on the part of the children, guests 
may be sheltered over-night in most homes, at 
least occasionally, and they may always be 
made free at our tables if we do not try to 
serve them too finely and are willing just to 
let them share what we have ourselves. An 



THRIFT OF WISE SPENDING. 63 

extra fork and spoon, cup and plate, and a 
loving and cordial welcome, spontaneous and 
full of cheer, are sufficient in houses where 
reality is as important as display. 

"You are just in time for dinner with the 
children and me," says the lady of the house 
— I like that phrase — to the guest who has 
happened in without previous notice. And 
she sets before him what she has, pot-luck. It 
may be cold meat and potatoes, or bread and 
cheese, a stew, a hash, what does it matter? 
He is introduced into the home intimacy in 
the sharing of loaf and cup. As for the chil- 
dren, they receive impressions from the pleas- 
ant talk, from the manners of the visitor. 
They get another view-point, a breath from 
the outside world blows through their home. 
The bondage of routine is a trifle less rigid. 
One may observe the difference in the bearing 
and speech of children in homes where hospi- 
tality is common, they are more in touch with 
people, less stiff, less shy, less reserved than 
those who never see any except the home folk. 
In the days to come when boy and girl are 
thrown out into the world, pushed from the 
home nest, when they enter on the business 



64 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

battlefield with its hurrying competitions they 
will win or lose largely through their early 
preparation. A fine manner, genial, self-for- 
getting and full of charm, is an invaluable 
preparation for success in professional or 
business spheres. For this reason, were there 
no others, it would be well for many a home 
to widen its scope, and oftener than it does, 
take in something new from the outside. 
Ministers' homes are, as a rule, open to many 
visiting friends and strangers, and though the 
parsonage is not burdened with worldly 
wealth, and the slender purse is sometimes 
sadly strained, the children reap the advan- 
tage of the interesting and cheering coming 
and going of those whom the minister enter- 
tains. Here is facility in adapting means to 
ends, here the grace that puts aside selfish 
ease, here the cordiality which makes room 
for others in the heart as in the house, and 
the children reap the profit of it all in after 
years. 

The best investment a man can make is not 
in land nor in stocks, in mines, nor in enter- 
prises of any speculative or even real value, as 
men rate values. It is the investment he 



THRIFT OF WISE SPENDING. 6$ 

makes in those who shall follow him and carry 
on his work when his hands are folded and his 
tasks are all fulfilled. To educate children 
well, in such symmetry, in such thoroughness, 
that they shall grow into rounded men and 
women, is to serve the present age and insure 
service for the years of many succeeding lives. 
For indeed, education, so to speak, runs in 
families. The college graduate desires that 
his children shall go to college. On the rolls 
of the universities the same names reappear 
from father to son, and, though women's col- 
leges are as yet comparatively new, one reads 
there names going down from mother to 
daughter. The educated alone appreciate the 
gentleness and the breadth born of a liberal 
education. 

In our country, every one, however scanty 
his means and narrow his circumstances, may 
secure for his sons and daughters a good edu- 
cation in our free schools, if he will permit 
them to remain there until the prescribed 
course is finished. It is, however, a period of 
specialization, and there are those who wish 
and need more enlarged opportunities than the 
free schools can give. I am not urging that 



66 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

against their will and simply to pass their 
time away, reluctant and thankless pupils 
should be kept in school. This would be 
folly, and a waste of time. But granting am- 
bition, ability, conscience and desire, children 
who long for education as an equipment for 
life should not be denied it, and though land 
is sold, or carpets are threadbare, or tables 
meagerly spread, money should be spent that 
the due advantages may be given. 

On every mission field, in every army corps, 
on every hospital staff, almost everywhere in 
places of prominence and usefulness known to 
men, we find the children, not of wealth, but 
of poverty, who having helped themselves, as 
their parents have helped them, have climbed 
to the top. Here is a thrift of wise spending 
that some hesitating parent, wondering 
whether it is right to let the son in his twenties 
go on with educational work, when paying 
business beckons with a hope of immediate 
profit, may ponder seriously. The shop, the 
bank, the counting-room, will offer the lad 
wages at once. The profession has nothing 
to offer for strenuous years to come. Yet, let 
the boy choose. There is that scattereth that 



THRIFT OF WISE SPENDING. 67 

it may increase. There is that withholdeth, 
and it tendeth at last to want and penury. 

Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, 
whether we die, we die unto the Lord. All 
earthly life takes hold on heaven. We are 
not sowing seed for time that is transient, but 
for eternity that endures. Therefore our 
economy should not lose sight of permanence, 
and character building should be of greater 
account in our sight than present ease, or pres- 
ent prosperity. Looking onward, looking up- 
ward, let us spend thriftily as stewards of a 
divine owner. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A r A LENT FOR LOVING. 

JT) RILLIANT, clever, accomplished, 

JL) witty, learned and profound women 
are plenty in these days of widely dif- 
fused education and incomparable social op- 
portunity. But there is still an old-fashioned 
type of woman who is dowered with none of 
those characteristics, who is not quick at rep- 
artee, whose school-room culture was, on the 
whole, superficial, and who is not remarkable 
for her beauty, yet to whom belongs a dis- 
tinct charm. This sort of woman may have few 
showy talents, but she has in perfection one 
that is of purest gold and rings true. She has a 
talent for loving. Her sunny nature makes 
her dear ones happy, her gentleness is as a 
shield for them against sharp arrows of dis- 
appointment or rebuffs in the world's contests 



72 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

and her tenderness enfolds her husband, chil- 
dren, or nearest of kin, until home seems a 
real heavenly place. Often her talent for 
loving widens so that she has sympathy for 
neighbors and acquaintances in their joys and 
sorrows, so that old people turn to her with 
confidence; in their increasing loneliness find- 
ing in her support and strength; so that the 
poor understand that she will give them what 
is more than money, and more than food and 
raiment — namely, a sister's heart and a sis- 
ter's helping hand. 

This dear woman with a genius for kind- 
ness, multiplies her one talent until it becomes 
ten talents. To her home comes the mother- 
less boy in his hour of temptation, sits down 
beside her, confides in her wisdom, and is in- 
sensibly lifted into a purer air. The people in 
her church who have been drifting apart, 
drifting perilously close to the lee-shore of 
apathy, or of discontent, or of a creeping fog 
of bitterness meet in her parlor and go forth 
in amity. She never seems to try, but she 
brings out the best that is in her friends, and 
the worst retreats and hides itself from view. 



A TALENT FOR LOVING. 73 

The hateful, the mean, the malicious, cannot 
flourish in her neighborhood. 

Possibly the lady of whom I am thinking 
is the possessor of abundant means. Possibly 
she is very poor. It does not make much dif- 
ference. Wealth and poverty are accidents 
of circumstances, the enduring things lie 
deeper and are rooted in the soul; they are 
independent of mere externals. The woman 
whose wonderful witch-hazel wand discovers 
so much that is beautiful in her friends may 
live in an ample house or in an attic. Where 
she dwells does not affect the situation. That 
depends on herself. 

One such woman I knew years ago. She 
was a tailoress by trade, and, in days that 
were simpler than these, she went from house 
to house plying scissors, needles, and thread. 
We looked forward to her cheery coming for 
weeks, and, finally, counted the days till the 
eventful morning arrived. I can see her now, 
erect, slender, trim, with merry black eyes and 
a pleasant smile; with quick birdlike move- 
ments, and a snappy crispness of speech. 
She always saw that the discarded garment 



74 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

which had looked so hopeless could be trans- 
formed into an elegant coat for a child. She 
thought it worth while to turn the more than 
half-worn dress and manage, by sheer pluck 
and audacity of contrivance, to get for it a 
new lease of usefulness. She had an amazing 
faculty for seizing on the best of things and 
for minimizing discouragements. Going 
from village to village and from town to 
town, she told good news or, if there were 
bad news, her unconquered optimism rain- 
bowed it with a promise of swift and sure im- 
provement. 

From youth to old age this indomitable 
spirit kept its unwavering courage and its 
dauntless faith. Every door that opened to 
her did so gladly. Every time she said 
good-by and went trudging home with her 
black satchel and her black poke-bonnet and 
her rolled-up umbrella she left regret behind 
her. She was one of those rare women who 
are popular without effort, and are a blessing 
wherever they go. But she never could save 
a penny, so many depended upon her for 
bread, or schooling, or temporary care, and 
if God had not stooped to take her softly to 



A TALENT FOR LOVING. 75 

himself at the end of one of her common 
working days, she must have spent her last 
years in an old ladies' home. 

Another friend, with a talent for loving 
equal to that of the little tailoress, was her 
life long lifted above the ranks of the toilers. 
She never even afar off suspected the grinding 
wretchedness of seldom having quite enough 
to pay one's way. A childhood of luxury, a 
girlhood of enchantment, a wedded life of ab- 
solute satisfaction were hers, and her environ- 
ment always suited her; she was the queen of 
a large and stately home, where reverence 
and affection were her handmaids. She, too, 
had, above every other talent, that of draw- 
ing people to her and making men pleased 
and contented. Never was she too busy to re- 
ceive her friends, and never too pre-occupied 
to give them a whole attention. Her friends 
ranged from great scholars, and men and 
women high in the ranks of the conspicuous 
and famous, to the lowly and obscure, to the 
laundress with the crippled husband, and the 
lad who sold newspapers and blacked boots. 
In a hundred little thoughtful ways she made 
the world brighter and by nameless unnoted 



76 THE DAILY PATHWAY, 

courtesies smoothed the paths of her com- 
rades on the road. 

We care a great deal for those shining 
qualities which give so much attractiveness to 
manner, but after all, this special ability to 
take a genuine interest in others, our brothers 
and sisters, and this unselfish solicitude to 
serve them, is the finer acquisition. A man 
once said to me of his wife with whom he 
had taken a midwinter journey, when the 
train had been snowbound, provisions had 
given out, and everything had been most de- 
pressing: "Mary was the life of the party. 
We did not know a passenger when we 
started. We knew every man, woman, and 
child on board before our blockade was over. 
She was gay, resourceful, amusing ; she helped 
everybody; she knew how to make the dull 
hours slip away. I tell you I felt very proud 
of Mary." He had reason for pride. She 
had not considered herself. She had 
given of her own blithe good humor and 
brave good cheer to make that cold, impa- 
tient and half-famished company of storm- 
stayed people reasonable, hopeful, and serene. 

I do not so highly prize as some the diploma 



A TALENT FOR LOVING. 77 

with the broad seal of a great institu- 
tion. Such certificates are useful attestations 
of the fidelity with which young women have 
studied and striven, but they are of less value 
than the document, angel-recorded, which an 
illiterate woman sometimes earns, and on 
which our Lord has written, "She hath done 
what she could." 

The late Alice Freeman Palmer, who did 
so much for womanly enlargement and educa- 
tion, and whose sudden death in Paris one 
December day made us all bereft, was noted 
for her magnetic sympathy and the catholicity 
of her friendliness. She was the peer of 
many learned men. Academic honors clus- 
tered about her name. Her career was one of 
ministry and blessing, and one of the lovely 
things about her was that she remembered so 
affectionately and so individually all her old 
students. The Wellesley girls who were at 
college when she was president knew that 
they might count upon her devotion, her wis- 
dom, and her personal love to the last bit of 
her strength and the last moment of her time. 

Far less widely known, dear to a much less 
extended circle, were two women — one in the 



78 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Presbyterian Home Mission work, one in the 
Reformed Church, in its foreign work, who, 
in 1902, were called home. Mrs. Pierson and 
Mrs. Gushing both occupied desks in an office, 
both knew very well the work of their re- 
spective boards, and both had large hearts, 
winsome manners, and deep consecration to 
the Master. Of each it could be said with 
most entire truth, "She had a genius for lov- 
ing." That pure flame of love made the daily 
work of each a radiant joy, and caused each to 
diffuse and dispense warmth about her as she 
did her work. 

Another such woman, Mrs. Kate Brownlee 
Horton, long identified with the Home Mis- 
sion work of the Reformed Church, was 
called home on the day before Christmas, 
1903. She was a woman of unique strength 
and poise, of deep sympathies, of immense 
power over men and women. But the won- 
derful thing about her was her amazing 
faculty of loving with Christ-like love, hun- 
dreds in States situated East, West, North 
and South. People in frontier parsonages, 
in the mountains of the South, in the Indian 
settlements were grief-stricken when she went 



A TALENT FOR LOVING. 79 

from us all. She broke her alabaster box of 
precious ointment literally on the altar of her 
love to Jesus and his disciples. 

My heart turns back a few summers ago, 
to watch again for a word from the hill coun- 
try of Virginia, whence suddenly Lucy Ran- 
dolph Fleming was called to the presence of 
the King. Slight, fragile, intense, gifted be- 
yond most women, a minister's wife with the 
abundant cares of the parish on her hands, 
lovely as daughter, sister, wife, mother, and 
friend, she left the world poorer for me and 
for many. On her tombstone in the high- 
lands is the one word "Faithful." It is 
enough. Lucy had many talents, but her fin- 
est talent of all was the talent for loving. 

What interferes with us, that more of our 
Christian life is not marked by this efflores- 
cence of abundant love? If we pattern our 
daily lives by that of our Master we shall not 
only, as he did, go about doing good, but we 
shall make those whom we meet aware of his 
divinely affluent spirit of compassion and ten- 
derness. 

How may we receive in fullest measure this 
gracious endowment? The chief obstacle is 



80 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

absorption in things earthly and material. 
The medium through which the sweetness of 
the Christ-life shall be brought into ours is 
communion with him. Because we do not 
go to him for new supplies of grace our spirit- 
ual natures are dwarfed and poor. We have 
naught to bestow because we have not sought 
gifts from Jesus Christ in prayer. The moun- 
tain stream that flows in crystal clearness 
through the pasture lands has its spring far 
up in the hills. If we are to refresh those we 
love we must ourselves be refreshed by him 
who is all love. 

If I have seemed in this simple talk be- 
tween times to dwell most upon the oppor- 
tunities and talents of women, it is not that 
I fancy they have a monopoly of the exquisite 
talent for friendship. A man's intensity of 
pity, of affection, or of unselfishness is as po- 
tential and beneficent as that of any woman. 
Fathers are not less devoted than mothers. 
Brothers are as self-forgetful as sisters. Hus- 
bands are not surpassed in unswerving tender- 
ness by wives. The pastor, with his never- 
ceasing urgency of toil, in his study, by sick 
beds, in homes of bereavement, in ministries 



A TALENT FOR LOVING. 81 

to the afflicted, and in multiform activities, 
winningly exemplifies this talent for loving 
much and giving much — the true altruism. 

On stormy and on sunny days, too, I ob- 
serve the doctor's carriage going down the 
street. I know with what wistfulness of en- 
treaty eyes meet his, with what agony of de- 
sire hands clasp his, as he stands by the couch 
of the fevered patient, or prescribes for the 
beloved child. How restrained, how wise, 
how thoughtful, how generous is this man's 
loving life, giving alone a service for which 
money alone can never pay, and entering into 
households, here, there, everywhere, as auto- 
crat, as helper, as closest friend ! 

Certain dumb souls have a great talent for 
loving-kindness. They are not eloquent in 
speech. They cannot express all they feel, 
but their actions speak in their behalf. Of 
such may be the engineer who dies at his post, 
but saves the train ; the captain, brief and per- 
emptory in words and tones, but, fearless and 
tireless, standing on the bridge through the 
long tempest, while the great steamer trusts 
itself with its freight of voyagers to his vigi- 
lant care. 



82 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Of the talent for loving, it may safely be 
said that it is never a talent for indolent 
languor or disgraceful inertia. The loving 
are the giving, in every land, in every age. 
James Chalmers, dying, after a lifetime of 
service in New Guinea, at the hands of the 
cannibal islanders, is a beautiful example of 
the love that counted no cost too great if the 
Master might be served. All true love is, in 
some degree, sacrificial, and offers itself upon 
the altar a living flame. The love that 
merely absorbs homage, that demands and ex- 
acts and refuses to give is not true Christ-love, 
nor does it have aught of heaven in its es- 
sence. Our Lord surrendered his life upon 
the cross for us, and as he loved us, so ought 
we to love one another. 



Keeping One' 's Word 



Evil is wrought by want of thought, 
As well as want of heart." 




CHAPTER VII. 

KEEPING ONE'S WORD. 

^ / ^HE little dressmaker came home late 
£ one evening, to find her mother anx- 
iously keeping her supper hot. It 
was spring, and showery. Amy had hurried 
off in the morning without overshoes and um- 
brella, in brilliant sunshine. She had re- 
turned in a drenching downpour that swept 
the streets like a cataract, and wet through 
her thin jacket till it clung to her like another 
skin. 

"The first thing to do, dear," said Mrs. 
Kirtchavel, "is to put on dry clothing. I do 
hope you won't take cold. Here, swallow a 
cup of tea before you stir a step, this will 
warm you. Why, child, you are all ashiver." 
Amy drank the tea and made haste to ex- 
change her dripping garments for others that 



86 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

were dry. She ate her supper with relish; 
from choice her mother had waited, and kept 
her company as she did so. There was a bit 
of broiled ham, and around it were crisp fried 
potatoes, and Mrs. Kirtchavel had made toast 
delicately browned. Simple as it was, the 
meal was delicious. 

"My dear little girl," the mother said, as 
she made Amy rest in the big rocking-chair, 
and herself cleared away the dishes. Amy 
was tired after her long day's work. 

"Did Mrs. Sutton pay you?" asked Mrs. 
Kirtchavel. 

"Not altogether. She gave me five dol- 
lars, and told me to call for the rest on Satur- 
day. That will be in time to help us out with 
the rent, mother." 

"Yes, if Mrs. Sutton keeps her word." 

The mother's tone implied a doubt. 

"She has plenty of money," said Amy. "I 
don't see why she pays me in driblets. The 
house is beautiful. I wish you could see it. 
One's feet sink into the rugs and slide on the 
polished floors. The table is rich with cut 
glass, and china, and silver. Miss Charlotte 
and Miss Mary have so many dresses they 



KEEPING ONES WORD. 87 

don't know what to do with them, and they 
never stop to think what they spend." 

"Yet, Amy, they never seem to be ready to 
settle your little bill when it is due. Well, 
we'll be hopeful that Mrs. Sutton won't for- 
get about it Saturday. Here are some letters, 
dear." 

As Amy opened the first, her countenance 
fell. The expression was literally descriptive. 
The light went out of her eyes. Gloom set- 
tled on her brow. 

"Oh, mother," she exclaimed. "Listen to 
this. 

" 'Dear Miss Kirtchavel: 

" 'Mamma wishes me to explain to you our 
very great regret that we must cancel the en- 
gagement we have made with you to sew for 
us next month. We are going abroad for the 
season, a very suddenly arranged trip, and 
are closing our house for the summer months. 
As we shall be constantly going about we 
shall not require anything but our old clothes, 
and so, the four weeks which we had planned 
to devote to new ones will be left out of our 
year, and you will not be needed. You have 



88 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

so many customers and are so much in de- 
mand, that we are sure this will not be a se- 
rious inconvenience to you, and mamma de- 
sires me to say that she is sorry she did not 
know of the proposed jaunt sooner. 
" 'Truly yours, 

" 'Lillian Fairlie.' " 

Mrs. Kirtchavel's face was as blank as 
Amy's. The four weeks at Mrs. Fairlie's 
were a matter of anticipation to the little 
household of two, for more reasons than Mrs. 
Fairlie dreamed. The work in that house was 
peculiarly pleasant; it was liberally paid for 
and payment was prompt. In Mrs. Kirtcha- 
vel's exchequer, funds at the moment were 
low as the sands in an expiring hour glass. 
Long illness of an immediate and helpless 
relative had depleted their resources, and as 
the poor are generous to their kith and kin, 
neither Amy nor her mother had complained. 
They had, however, been counting on the Sut- 
ton engagement to replenish the lean purse. 
The worst of it was, that the season was late, 
and Amy, expecting to go to the Fairlies', had 
turned away other applicants whom she could 



KEEPING ONE'S WORD. 89 

not now hope to secure. Mother and daugh- 
ter sought their pillows with heavy hearts and 
Amy cried herself to sleep in the dark. Next 
morning found her braver, and she sallied 
forth to repair the misfortune of this disap- 
pointment as best she could, but was not 
very successful. On Saturday, when she 
called at Mrs. Sutton's, she found no one 
at home. 

"Was there a note or message left for 
me?" she asked. 

"No, Miss," said the maid, who suspected 
the state of the case. She added, "I can give 
you the name of the hotel where they be stop- 
ping at Atlantic City." 

"No, thank you," said Amy. "I won't 
write. You say they'll be at home in ten 
days?" 

"Yes, Miss," said the maid, beaming with 
sympathy. Below stairs she confided to the 
cook her opinion of "foine ladies that does 
be kapin' back poor folks' earnings. We 
wouldn't stand it," she said, and Bridget 
agreed with her. 

The Fairlies, on their part, crossed the 
ocean with light hearts and untroubled con- 



90 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

sciences. It did not once occur to them that 
they had behaved unjustly to a woman who 
could not help herself or do without the work 
they had pledged her. Of the perplexities, 
embarrassments and real suffering their fail- 
ure to carry out their contract had caused, 
they had not the slightest suspicion. 

The Suttons were destined to have their 
eyes opened, for Amy Kirtchavel and her 
mother were members of the same church 
with themselves. 

Shortly after their return from Atlantic 
City, their minister was calling on them, and 
he casually observed, as he was leaving their 
home: 

"I wish, if you can manage it, that some of 
you, or one of you, would be so very good as 
to look in on the Kirtchavels. Amy works so 
hard that she gets run down, and I am sorry 
that she has among her rich patrons a few 
who are thoughtless about paying her punctu- 
ally, or keeping their engagements. Her 
mother has been ill with pleurisy. They 
really need a little sunshine, and you girls can 
give it." 

The good man beamed on them with 



KEEPING ONE'S WORD. 91 

a smile like a benediction, and was gone. 
They looked at each other with crimson 
cheeks. 

"We owe Amy Kirtchavel some money. 
Do you imagine she'd be so mean as to men- 
tion it to Dr. Topping?" 

"Not she," said the mother. "May, run 
over to Hartt Street at once, and pay her our 
debt. Now that I think of it, Mr. Fairlie's 
going to Europe must have crippled the 
Kirtchavels surely." 

May Sutton was received by Amy with her 
usual quiet composure, and she would not 
have guessed that the money she brought 
meant actual food and other necessities, if she 
had not encountered the house-agent on the 
stairs and heard him say to the tenant in the 
flat below : 

"I'm awfully sorry for those people above, 
but if they don't pay me, I'll have to dispos- 
sess them." 

She was an impulsive girl and she rushed 
back. Entering without knocking, she sur- 
prised Amy as she counted the bills she had 
left. 

"Amy, don't be proud, dear. Tell me 



92 THE DAILY PATHWAY, 

quick, please. Have you enough there for 
present wants, rent, and — everything?" 

Amy blushed. "Yes, just enough." 

"Then, come to-morrow, I've two new 
frocks to be made. You shall never have to 
wait for our money again." 

And she never did. 

The familiar poetry of Hood tells us that 

"Evil is wrought by want of thought, 
As well as want of heart;" 

and in multiplied instances this is true. Peo- 
ple do not mean to be neglectful. They do 
not fully appreciate the situation of others. 
Time drifts by, swiftly, noiselessly, merrily, 
to the happy-hearted, and they do not know 
how leaden-footed and slow-paced he is to the 
indigent and the wretched. 

A homily on keeping one's word, is never 
out of place. One who has pledged herself or 
himself to any course involving the actions of 
others, is in honor bound to fulfil his portion 
of the contract. When the matter is one of 
apparently slight moment, the obligation is as 
binding as if in greater things. In ethics 
there is no distinction between the larger and 



KEEPING ONE'S WORD. 93 

the smaller. A thing is right or it is 
wrong. 

Now that summer is bringing to the lux- 
urious life of the great cities the annual pause, 
when hundreds of families disintegrate, when 
people seek fresh air and repose in the coun- 
try, it is worse than needless to break a 
plighted word to a tradesman, a grocer, a 
laundress, or any member of the toiling multi- 
tude. Well-to-do people go away leaving un- 
paid accounts, probably through mere care- 
lessness, at the very season when business is 
dullest. The expenses of the poor go right 
on. Their children are born and die in 
summer as in winter. Rent must be paid. 
Old and feeble kindred need attention; 
nothing stops, except the work that in win- 
ter brings income in its wake. A word of 
reminder is therefore not misplaced in this 
regard. 

Still another suggestion. Obliging people 
who hate to say no, often say yes unthink- 
ingly; they promise to go here or yonder, to 
make a visit, to do a favor, to write a letter, 
or to read a book, and then — they do not keep 
their word. Insincerity flaws their character 



94 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

like a vein of dross in the mine where one 
looks for gold. 

In the household, perhaps, some of us need 
to emphasize this obligation. Mothers be- 
wail in their children a tendency to untruth- 
fulness, and wonder where the little ones 
learn deceit. Are they sufficiently watchful 
of their own example? Said little Miriam 
one day to her mother: "You do not like 
Mrs. C. ; I heard you tell grandmamma you 
would be glad if she never called on you 
again; but you kissed her when she came in 
this afternoon, and said, 'How kind you are 
to come V " The child was a spectator, an 
auditor, and a critic, and a scene like this was 
to her a lesson in hypocrisy, though the 
mother was far from meaning to give one. 
Children have quick intuitions. They read 
between the lines, and discern the false from 
the true with unerring swiftness. If we would 
have them true in speech and thought and con- 
duct, we must ourselves be true, never prom- 
ising or threatening without performance of 
promise or threat, even at great personal in- 
convenience. 

A habit of exaggeration, if indulged in, 






KEEPING ONE'S WORD. 95 

makes havoc of truth. Heedlessly many of 
us accentuate our statements by a departure 
from simplicity. We are lavish in the use of 
superlatives; we magnify or diminish our 
accounts of things experienced or dreaded, 
and the truth in our descriptions is as a grain 
of wheat in a peck measure of chaff. 

Because of devotion to truth, we need not 
condemn imagination, or condemn ourselves 
to a too literal realism. Imagery often 
heightens truth, as the sunset clouds beautify 
the light of the western sky at evening. A 
consecrated imagination finds its path straight 
and clear to truth and faith. 

Truth is one of the basal foundations of 
life. No strong sweet Christianity is possible 
without it. In reliance upon him who is the 
Truth, as well as the Way and the Life, shall 
we not try to keep our word, scrupulously, 
when once it has been given? 



The Passing of Gallantry 



" I ask thee for the thoughtful love, 
Though constant, watching wise, 
To meet the glad with joyful smiles 
And to wipe the weeping eyes." 




CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PASSING OF 
GALLANTRY. 

r> ESSIMISTS bewail the decline of the 
jf~ fine old-school manner which lent so 
much charm to social intercourse, and 
so pleasantly smoothed away the rough places 
on the road of life. It was once our American 
boast that American men were invariably cour- 
teous to women, and that women, unattended, 
might travel the length and breadth of the 
land, finding a squire in every fellow-passen- 
ger. In public conveyances, a century ago, 
few men buried themselves in the oblivion of 
the newspaper, comfortably seated, while 
women, old and young, tugged at the straps 
suspended from the car railing that they might 
not be thrown from an uneasy footing. At 



I f C 



ioo THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

present, the rule is that the young man keeps 
his seat, having paid his fare, leaving the 
pretty young girl, the weary matron of middle 
age, or the silver-haired grandmother, to stand 
or scramble, as best she may, while only elderly 
gentlemen, trained in a school of finer breed- 
ing, are deferential to all women near them, 
and as courteous to a laundress carrying home 
her laden basket as they would be to a queen 
were they in her company. Even small boys, 
of six, seven and ten, stolidly sit or clumsily 
sprawl, while ladies stand, and their una- 
bashed mothers sit by them, tranquilly educat- 
ing them to be little boors now and big boors 
hereafter. 

Some improvement in feminine manners 
might reasonably be asked so far as we are 
concerned with politeness in public and to 
strangers. The failure to render thanks for 
small attentions, the freezing demeanor to- 
wards the garrulous old lady, new to the town 
and accustomed to friendly sociability when at 
home, where every one knows every one else, 
and all are neighborly, the hurrying and push- 
ing in front of others that a place may be 
gained in the ferry boat or the street car, and 



THE PASSING OF GALLANTRY. 101 

the occasional lack of gracious tact where 
women encounter those for whom they 
do not specially care, are all open to criti- 
cism. 

A party of ladies from a Northern city, 
some years ago, attended an exposition in a 
Southern town. They belonged to a patrician 
circle, and had been educated in the refinements 
of society; were, in fact, among those who are 
popularly supposed to dictate the requirements 
of good form to their less cultured acquaint- 
ances. Yet so unmannerly were they, so 
patronizing, so arrogant in their behaviour 
that a gentle Southern woman remarked pity- 
ingly to me that she feared they had been 
badly brought up, and an English woman 
added that in her home such people would not 
be tolerated. 

If there is a decline of good manners in pub- 
lic, the causes for it are patent to every 
thoughtful student of sociology. Looking 
back a hundred years, we discover that the 
ravages of great wars have periodically thrust 
women, impoverished by the loss of the bread- 
winners, who have gone down before the 
sword as grain before the reaper, out of the 



102 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

safe shelter of the home and into the fore- 
ground where competition is fierce and the 
struggle for existence goes relentlessly on. 
Applied science, labor-saving inventions, and 
the march of improvement have added to the 
condition, primarily due to the fiery sweep of 
the battle's onset, and wom°n have come out 
into the open, and entered the lists of wage- 
earning occupations, on equal terms with men. 
Yet not wholly on equal terms, since in many 
lines the payment of women is smaller for the 
same hours of toil, and the same grade of 
labor, than to men, so that women actually 
crowd men out, and form an element of antag- 
onism, which must be considered in any argu- 
ment concerned with the social relations of the 
sexes. How can a man be expected to treat 
with the respectful gallantry which means de- 
votion, unselfish attention, and compliment, a 
being whose hands are as rough with toil as his 
own, whose wage-earning skill is as great, and 
whose opportunity to find employment is often 
greater? Still, let it never be forgotten, that 
the finest manner on the road to-day is often 
the manner of the workingman, and that a 
woman alone and in need of a lift will oftener 



THE PASSING OF GALLANTRY. 103 

receive it from the man with the leathern 
apron and the dinner-pail than from the man 
in immaculate linen and the latest up-to-date 
tie. 

At home, at the table, in the domestic 
forum, politeness should never be suffered to 
fall into desuetude. We should not be too 
hurried, or too worried, to treat those we love 
best with kindly patience, to wait upon the 
aged, and to bestow loving little attentions on 
the feeble and the sad. With what sweetness 
the simplest meal is invested if there be neither 
criticism nor fault-finding, but instead the 
honeyed flavor of praise. There are family 
meals which have about them the suggestion 
of the battlefield. Scowling faces, sharp 
words or a silence that may be felt, accompany- 
ing their progress, and the children who sit at 
such tables lose an important part of fine and 
gracious education. Wherever else in the 
home there is friction, the table should be a 
place of tranquillity, and peace, if not gayety, 
should reign when three times a day the house- 
hold gathers there. 

Allied to courtesy is gallantry, a fine thing 
and a fine word, debased and degenerate at 



io 4 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

times, through having fallen upon evil days. 
It springs from a French soil, this brave old 
word, that recalls mediaeval tournament and 
jousts, knights spurring to the lists, ladies look- 
ing down from garlanded balconies, and the 
trumpets sounding splendidly over the affray, 
the music clamorous and stirring the blood. 
Valiant deeds, heroic enterprises, chivalric ex- 
ploits are suggested by the word, itself a syno- 
nym for youth. Callant, the Scottish word 
so often used for a lad, half playfully, 
half lovingly, is a corruption of gallant, 
and which of us does not associate youth 
with all things strong, daring, dashing and 
fearless? Youth earns the Victoria Cross 
on the battlefield. Youth desperately 
rushes on in the forlorn hope. Youth, 
not age, grasps the spears and dies, if need be, 
to make way for liberty. The gallant tales of 
history are chronicles of what men do when the 
heart is young. 

Whatever may be said of courtesy, we can- 
not admit that gallantry is passing, when every 
dav the ordinary average man, the common- 
place, unlettered man shows us by some uncon- 
sciously grand act an illustration of it. Fire- 



THE PASSING OF GALLANTRY. 105 

men scale the perilous ladders to rescue women 
and children from a burning house. Seafar- 
ing men buffet wind and wave with a dogged 
courage that ignores danger and challenges 
death. The engineer stands fast at his post, 
though the hissing steam scald and the flying 
flame blister. The captain goes down with his 
ship. "Save the women!" is the cry of the 
men, when all are in extremity. The doctor 
and the nurse fight the deadly epidemic and are 
ministering angels in the city stricken with pes- 
tilence. Tender women, fighting a harder bat- 
tle than theirs, lie down on the operating table 
and submit themselves to the surgeon's knife, 
fearlessly, smilingly, trustfully. No, gallantry 
is not gone from the earth, though courtesy is 
less in evidence in our hurrying days of tele- 
phone and wireless telegraphy and rushing 
train than it was when we crept along in the 
leisurely stage-coach, and changed our horses 
at the wayside tavern. 

It is more than probable that a radical 
change in our processes and schemes of 
womanly education has done its share in mod- 
ifying the manner of man to woman. When 
a girl has not completed her school education 



106 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

until she has reached her twenty-second or 
twenty-third year, when after this she spends a 
year or two in post-graduate study, and then 
teaches, or writes, or paints, or travels, or 
takes up a learned profession, her thoughts are 
not occupied with a future husband. The old 
point of view, very plainly indicated in Eng- 
lish literature, made it deplorable for a girl not 
to marry in her first youth. She was openly or 
covertly commiserated, her mother was pitied, 
she was in the position of left-over goods in a 
shop : nobody wanted her. Undoubtedly in 
the days of our ancestors, girls married simply 
that they might not become old maids. The 
term was one of dreaded reproach. No well- 
educated woman has in these days the faintest 
objection to spinsterhood, a most honorable 
and often a most independent estate. A single 
woman with a fortune of her own may go 
where she will, and live as she will, when her 
youth is past. A single woman with brains 
and the power to support herself may defy the 
world. She may be lonely, but she is not pitied 
or pitiable. 

Every large city has its provision for the 
unmarried of both sexes. The hotel for 



THE PASSING OF GALLANTR Y. 107 

women, a feature of the day, is elegant, well 
appointed and commodious, and it is thronged 
by appreciative gentlewomen who can pay for 
its comforts and conveniences. Young wage- 
earnings girls club together and keep house on 
a co-operative plan, with an older woman to 
mother them, and they are so happy, so busy 
and so ambitious that they are quite indifferent 
to the coming of any prince, offering to ride 
with them through the world, and take them 
to his palace on its other side. Indifference, if 
not hostility, to marriage is a feature of the 
period, and it has its share at least, to some 
extent, in doing away with the old and beauti- 
ful chivalry which peimeated the manner of 
man to woman. 

Nature, in the long run, will no doubt have 
her innings, and the probability is that the old, 
old fashion of love will never wholly perish 
from the experience of the race. In this early 
twentieth century we are in a transition state, 
and the desire we all feel to be bookish, to dive 
into science, and — shall we own it ? — to grow 
rich and be luxurious, has for the moment 
assumed imperious proportions. But home and 
love will yet weigh down the scale with their 



108 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

purer gold. A woman will not make a less 
faithful wife, a less devoted mother, a less in- 
telligent housekeeper, because of college disci- 
pline and culture, and though marriage may be 
deferred until a later day, happy homes will 
not decline. 

In the happy home, in the Christian name, 
we must find the answer to our question. Cour- 
tesy will never wane where there is considera- 
tion for others, and true unselfish zeal for the 
friend, the kinsman and the neighbor. When 
the heart's prayer is : 

"I ask thee for the thoughtful love 
Though constant, watching wise, 

To meet the glad with joyful smiles 
And to wipe the weeping eyes, 

A heart at leisure from itself 
To soothe and sympathize." 

there will be individual charity, which is love; 
individual kindness, which is courtesy, and un- 
failing politeness in the home, the office, and 
the street. 

I would like to put the emphasis on the 
Christ-indwelling, because none who live in 
conscious fellowship with Christ can be ruth- 
lessly selfish or thoughtlessly inconsiderate, or 



THE PASSING OF GALLANTRY. 109 

heedlessly indifferent to the rights and privi- 
leges of those whom they daily meet. In the 
home and out of it, they who love Jesus Christ 
must not only be strict in their integrity, but 
constantly gracious in their deportment. 

A few months ago in this city of New York 
a lovely woman, after a short illness, passed 
home to dwell with her Saviour. One who 
stood beside her, looking at her sweet face in 
its last sleep, said, "I have known her from 
early childhood. I have never known her to 
be other than gentle, kind and womanly. Her 
life has been a continual oblation. She never 
said a harsh word. She never did a discour- 
teous thing. She was a Christian of the high- 
est type." 

What lovelier thing than this could be said 
of you or of me? 

We, who deplore the passing of gallantry, 
ought to watch our own conduct, and see 
whether we are habitually thoughtful about 
little things. 

Little acts of kindness, 

Little words of love, 
Make our earth an Eden, 

Like the heaven above." 



no THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Observe the nicety with which the druggist 
weights the scale that holds some precious com- 
modity. Just a trifling difference in the weight, 
but a tiny bit too much or too little might 
determine the issue of life or death. So, in 
our home life, in the life of the shop, and the 
street, the small things weigh heaviest, and 
are the most important factors in the balance. 



The Every-day Woman 



M 



" The every-day woman's life is so happy, that 
she, the uncrowned queen of a secluded home, 
need envy no monarch in her royal robes and on 
her golden throne." 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE EVERT-DAY 

WOMAN 

*TT* HE every-day woman, who is she ? Not 
J[ the fashionable woman with so many 
engagements that she is as weary on 
Saturday night as a cook who has been broil- 
ing and baking since Monday, nor yet the 
woman at the other end of the plane, wear- 
ing her life out in the extreme of penury. The 
woman I have in mind is neither very rich nor 
very poor, very learned nor very ignorant; she 
is in the large and respectable class of average 
people from whom America draws its best citi- 
zens. Overseeing her housework, supervising 
her children, looking after the comfort of her 
husband, taking a more or less active share in 
the work of her church and of the community 
where she dwells, the every-day woman is a 
familiar figure, and we all know and love her. 



ii4 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

She is wife, mother, daughter, sister, sweet- 
heart, friend. Neither ambitious nor aggres- 
sive, complaining nor dissatisfied, she fills her 
place, and the candle she holds in her hand 
sheds light on the circumference of her home 
and her village. She is simply the dear every- 
day woman, contented to stay where the Lord 
has put her, and to her finger tips she is a fem- 
inine being, satisfied with feminine occupations 
and fulfilling feminine duties. 

Now, to this woman, as time passes, there 
comes certain perils and disadvantages. She 
sometimes finds, as her sons and daughters 
emerge from babyhood and its consequent de- 
pendence, that she is growing lonely. Her 
husband, even if engrossed in business, has, 
notwithstanding an outlet for any superfluous 
energy in his interest in politics, either of the 
State or the country, while, of course, local 
affairs enlist, to some extent, every good man 
in a given vicinage. Few women take a deep 
and direct interest in politics; they merely re- 
flect the interest of their men-folk. Dress, do- 
mesticity and housekeeping, after a while, pall 
on the attention, and a bright, intelligent 
woman observes to herself that life has lost its 



THE EVERY -DAY WOMAN. 115 

flavor. The peril that confronts her is 
that this condition may cease to be tran- 
sient and become permanent, and the attend- 
ant disadvantage is in her poverty of re- 
source. 

A general opinion has obtained acceptance 
that schools educate; that if one has gone 
through a certain course of study and come out 
on the other side of it, waving a certificate of 
thoroughness and proficiency, one is thencefor- 
ward a person of attainments in literature, and 
a well-disciplined graduate in mental exercises. 
Never was there a greater error. Schools and 
colleges do not educate — they prepare their 
pupils for the education of life. Their pur- 
pose is accomplished when they make their stu- 
dents facile in the use of tools. The best col- 
lege, the best university, can do no more than 
this. Each of us can remember essentially 
commonplace, not to say tedious, people, who 
have had all the culture that the most distin- 
guished teachers have been able to impart. 
The woman who has had liberal early train- 
ing is better off than her sister, whose range 
has been narrower, only as she has kept on in 
the use of the means for brain and heart 



n6 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

growth with which the schools equipped her 
before they sent her forth. 

If one would not be dull and rusty in middle 
life, one must continually take in new stores, 
and constantly add to what one has already 
gained. Mastery of weapons is kept by con- 
tinual daily practice. Some women drop bit 
by bit their accomplishments, their graces, 
their charms. One woman is older at thirty- 
five than another at sixty, because the latter 
has never had time to spend in thinking how 
the years were flying. Poverty of resource 
ages a woman more inevitably than does sor- 
row, or illness, or grief. 

Think of the women whose mental equip- 
ment is so scanty that they cannot keep atten- 
tion steadily fixed on anything higher than a 
sensational romance; that they fidget if a ser- 
mon exceeds twenty minutes in length ; that the 
very newspaper must have glaring headlines 
and dramatic narrative and a superfluity of pic- 
tures to be pleasing in their eyes. These are 
the every-day women who must endlessly talk, 
talk, over trifles; who cannot sit still and be 
composed when alone ; to whom solitude is al- 
ways intolerable, and who expatiate with 



THE EVERY -DAY WOMAN. 117 

amazing iteration over the most ordinary inci- 
dents, such as the breaking of a cup, the irrita- 
tion of a servant, the tearing of a child's frock. 
Poverty of resource makes an indolent woman 
lazy until exertion is almost impossible, con- 
verts an impatient woman into a shrew, and in- 
tensifies the morbidness of the melancholy 
woman. 

Every one of us needs something which can 
relieve the strain of the daily grind and take 
us out of ourselves. For breadth and future 
happiness, every woman should form a habit 
of daily reading, for profit as well as for pleas- 
ure. Aside from the Bible, which may be read 
perfunctorily, or may, on the contrary, be a 
most fascinating study, the woman at home 
should take up, with seriousness and intention, 
some line of work in history, ethics, or natural 
science, and make it her custom to spend an 
hour upon it during daylight. The usual 
method is to work by daylight on the sewing, 
cooking, visiting, and other absorbing routine 
engagements, and read by the evening lamp. 
I am not sure that any except young eyes 
should read by artificial light. The midnight 
oil is responsible for many a morning head- 



n8 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

ache. I hear remonstrances from this busy 
housekeeper, and that conscientious mother, to 
which I reply that I have known a very suc- 
cessful author who not only kept up her read- 
ing, but wrote books with her hand on a string 
attached to her baby's cradle and her ear open 
to the calls of the older children at play out- 
side her window. I recall another most de- 
lightful woman who never hesitated when her 
nerves began to tire, and she felt her tones 
sharpen, to stop just where she was in the 
midst of the ironing or the cleaning and go off 
with her children on a botanizing excursion 
in the woods. 

We make too much of our sweeping and our 
dusting, we have too many pretty things which 
require solicitous care, and we spend too much 
strength on pastry. A less elaborate style of 
house management would enable many women 
to read more, learn more, and think more than 
they do. 

If one has an accomplishment, as drawing, 
painting or music, one should be chary of let- 
ting that slip away from her. Time devoted 
to any beloved art or skill, to any handicraft 
not associated with daily necessity, is time well 



THE EVERY -DAY WOMAN. 119 

spent by the woman who would keep health, 
vigor, and attractiveness as well as a whole- 
some interest in life, to her latest day. 

Another desirable thing for the every-day 
woman is hospitality to new ideas. This does 
not mean that she shall be credulous, that she 
shall accept every novelty, or that she shall 
break away from the old safe moorings of 
faith and doctrine. There are convictions 
which are founded upon a rock-bottom of be- 
lief in God's Word, and they can never be 
shaken. But the every-day woman is a con- 
servative, and she often recoils from the pres- 
entation of truth in a new form; she regards 
anything unfamiliar with suspicion. Over- 
conservatism is a disadvantage of the every- 
day woman's make-up. Such a one cannot en- 
joy the Scriptures in any but the authorized 
version; the beauties and the new unfoldings 
of the English and American revisions are not 
agreeable to nor understood by her; the slight- 
est change in an order of worship in the sanc- 
tuary is disturbing to her sense of fitness. Yet 
the woman who would not be fettered by the 
despotism of old methods must let herself ex- 
pand and take in some new ideas. 



120 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

And, dear every-day woman, you must 
widen the circle of your friendships if you 
would retain the animation of your earlier 
days. Some of us have many friends; some 
have very few. She who clings only to her old 
friends will one day awake and discover that 
she is solitary for our friends are always leav- 
ing us. 

Look over the landscape of your life. Ten 
years, twenty years, thirty years ago, who were 
the women with whom you took sweet coun- 
sel ? Take up the catalogue of the old school, 
of the Woman's Board, of the hospital com- 
mittee ; how many of the names there recorded 
no longer respond to any earthly voice. 

"One by one we go," and so mercifully 
gradual are the changes that our Father ap- 
points, we seldom recognize their sweeping 
character until we deliberately take a retro- 
spective view. It is wise to make new friends 
on the road, and it seems a pleasant thing to 
anticipate new friends, to look forward in 
going to a new place, to an anniversary, or to 
any gathering of strangers, to the discovery of 
some one who shall be congenial and stimulat- 
ing. 



THE EVERY -DAY WOMAN. 121 

Another excellent step for the every-day wo- 
man is to definitely annex herself to some 
world movement beyond her own door. The 
woman who belongs to a Home or a Foreign 
Mission Society, and who lives up to the meas- 
ure of her obligations and privileges as a mem- 
ber, is as really enlarging and benefiting her- 
self as she is sending help to the frontiers or 
across the sea. A live society, not a formal, 
half-dead one, is a real school of nurture in all 
that is good. While hearts are yearning over 
the suffering women and children of heathen- 
ism, they grow more tender and compassion- 
ate for all who suffer at home. The comrade- 
ship of the society, the fellowship in service 
which is brought about by the coming together 
of a half-dozen churches in annual or semi- 
annual conference, is an uplifting experience 
for the woman who, but for this outlet, would 
be drudging or dreaming at home. Drudgery 
is good and dreaming is good, if either is lim- 
ited; but neither is profitable if it usurps too 
large a place, and beneficent work with and for 
the Lord is the remedy for too much of the 
fanciful and too much of the realistic in one's 
progress. 



122 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

But more than all else, beyond all else, the 
every-day woman needs and must have the 
blessedness of a walk with God. When we 
consider how accessible our Lord is, how free 
are his offers of company by the way, how 
gently he leads us, and how precious are his 
gifts and favors, what can we do but wonder 
at his goodness ? Each of us may often, with 
Mary, sit at his feet; with Martha, serve him 
in small, homely ways; with Dorcas, make 
raiment for his poor; with Rhoda, open a 
door for one of his disciples; with Phoebe and 
Priscilla and Julia, minister to his saints; with 
Eunice and Lois, instruct his little ones; with 
Lydia, gather his people together in our home 
for prayer; with the woman who loved much 
because to her much had been forgiven, break 
an alabaster box in its fragrance to rest his 
weariness; with watching women we may kneel 
at his cross still, and find him in the early 
dawn in the garden of lilies, not dead but risen. 
Commonplace, everyday women we may be, 
yet each of us may be our Lord's elect lady. 

Among the joys of the every-day experience 
common to all, and consequent upon duty 
faithfully performed, are a thousand little 



THE EVERY -DAY WOMAN. 123 

things uncalendared and unchronicled. The 
morning and evening greetings, the caresses of 
children, the visits of kindred and friends, the 
pleasures that spring up like summer flowers 
in the pathway, the letters from those we love, 
and the occasional bright surprises of success 
that dignify and beautify the home, may be 
counted. More frequent is the bliss than the 
dole. Taken by and large, the every-day 
woman's life is so happy, that she, the un- 
crowned queen of a secluded home, need envy 
no monarch in her royal robes and on her 
golden throne. 



Gentle Folk 



" The essential quality in man or woman, which 
makes either agreeable in the intercourse of the 
family, is politeness which never fails." 




CHAPTER X. 

GENTLE FOLK. 

T T ZWO are gentle folk? In the days 
y fr of the Pilgrim Fathers, when so- 
cial lines were sharply defined, 
there were positive distinctions between classes 
which everybody recognized, and nobody re- 
sented. The lady was then a step higher than 
the goodwife, the gentleman was several de- 
grees more honorable in the public eye than the 
serving man. Satin and velvet and laces for 
the one set, homespun and woollen for the 
other, while yet they lived together in relations 
free from envy and most cordially kind. As 
the years have brought changes, the old dis- 
tinctions have been obliterated, the old lines 
have been erased. In this land there is no 
longer an acknowledged aristocracy basing its 
claims on blood. Sometimes indeed the old 



128 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

family names have not lost their spell, and a 
certain prestige belongs to the ancient house 
denied to the new, yet a day laborer may bear 
the name that once belonged to a judge, and 
his son may sit in the public school beside the 
son of the judge whose family is one of lately 
imported stock. Our period is one of inces- 
sant seeking, startling transition; we have a 
sort of commercial untitled nobility, it is true, 
in this time of rapid money making; but we 
have no gentry in the old English meaning of 
the word. 

Who, then, are gentle folk, and in what 
does their peculiar charm consist? The ques- 
tion is pertinent. In the fierce competitions 
and headlong rush of city life, gallantry is 
passing, but good manners still obtain, and are 
always an evidence of good breeding. I was 
in a street car the other day, an open car, into 
which with difficulty climbed an old woman, 
lame, clumsy, shabby and hampered alike by 
her feebleness and her avoirdupois. It seemed 
as if she could not by any effort drag herself 
up to the seat, but the conductor helped her, 
and two or three men on their way to business 
lent willing hands, while one, observing her 



GENTLE FOLK. 129 

distress, said soothingly, "Take your time, 
Madam; there is no hurry." Here were pres- 
ent gentle folk, considerate of others, compas- 
sionate and swift with assistance. Every wo- 
man who goes about much, in a busy town like 
New York, knows the swift and spontaneous 
courtesy of the workingman, the man with 
rough clothes and hard hands. He is gentle to 
children and old people, and very seldom im- 
polite. 

Gentle folk are considerate in the small as 
in the great things, ready and tactful and ten- 
der in the commerce of the home. They not 
only refrain from uttering disagreeable ex- 
pressions and sentiments, but they take pains 
to be pleasant. I cannot imagine them snob- 
bish, or capable of currying favor with those 
from whom they hope for bounty. A gentle- 
man or a gentlewoman is simple and sincere. 
When in a home, one hears that sort of criti- 
cism which hurts, that vehemence of argument 
which leaves a sting, the element of gentleness 
is lacking. For without self-restraint, self- 
mastery, self-effacement and gentle manners 
cannot exist. 

Another characteristic of the true gentle- 



130 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

man and woman is honesty. Truth in speech, 
truth in thought, truth regnant and profound, 
scorning evasion and exaggeration, such truth 
is essential to the development of the highest 
manhood. Trickery and deceit have no place 
in the lives of real gentle folk. 

It follows that those who belong to this 
great order may wear coarse raiment and per- 
haps be dwellers in huts as often as in palaces. 
The outside may be plain and they may eat the 
crust of poverty, but they are "all glorious 
within." Some of them sit on thrones, some 
of them sweep streets; it does not matter about 
their garb or their occupation, they are gentle 
folk because the spiritual nature is large and 
fine and clear, and they live in the world and 
yet are above the world. It is a great thing to 
be so grand in the citadel that it makes no 
difference how ordinary looking may be the 
approaches that guard the door. 

Dropping metaphor, the gentle folk of the 
earth, wherever we find them, recognize that 
they have a duty to God, as well as to their 
fellow-men. Fear God and keep his com- 
mandments is their motto. They walk in the 
light, for it shines upon them from heaven. In 



GENTLE FOLK. 131 

every clime we discover them, in every land, in 
all conditions of ignorance or learning, of 
penury or want, of color and of race. A gen- 
tleman is of all kindreds and at home 
everywhere. A gentlewoman in kitchen or 
in drawing room, on the train, in the ship, 
in the shop or the factory is queen of the situa- 
tion. 

There is a familiar saying that it takes three 
generations to make a gentleman. This is 
only another way of declaring that fine man- 
ners are matters of inheritance as well as of 
ceaseless attention, and that certain advan- 
tages accrue from living in an atmosphere of 
sunshine. I have seen boorish rudeness in men 
of long descent, and an exceeding grace in men 
whose fathers had been slaves on a plantation. 
And again and again I have observed in rude 
and uncultured people the transforming 
power of grace and the love of Christ as it 
wrought a complete change in their manner, 
until tones were softened and behavior was 
decorous and the life grew wonderfully un- 
selfish and therefore gentle. Not always 
are men lovable because of birth and edu- 
cation, but the Christian, whose life is 



i 3 2 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

hid with his Lord, is never else than lova- 
ble. 

To come to very practical matters, we may 
well glance at our own conduct in the daily life 
of the home. Are we gentle folk there? 
How about the far too prevalent habit of 
fault-finding? People drift into this before 
they are aware of it, and are very apt to make 
those around them miserable over little things 
that are of no special importance, curiously in- 
sensible on their own part that they are doing 
wrong. Nobody is more virtuous than the 
chronic fault-finder. The man, fastidious 
about food, who upsets the composure of his 
wife, because the meat is tough or overdone or 
underdone, who seldom praises but often 
blames her conduct of affairs, may be a reputa- 
ble citizen and a straightforward man of busi- 
ness, but he is far from belonging to true gen- 
tle folk. The woman whose irritability and 
whose moods keep her family in dread of her 
anger, who says satirical words, and has frosty 
looks in the privacy of the home, may be 
clever, capable and learned; but she is not 
truly and all through a gentlewoman. The 
essential quality in man or woman which 



GENTLE FOLK. 133 

makes either agreeable in the intercourse of 
the family, is politeness which never fails, be- 
ing founded upon that charity which thinketh 
no evil, and envieth not. 

We talk about manners of the old school, 
meaning manners punctiliously ceremonious 
and dignified. Such manners belonged to the 
more leisurely days when we had no telephones 
nor telegraphs, no flying automobiles nor light- 
ning express trains. A return to their win- 
some graciousness might do much to coax back 
to the world the serenity which was and is so 
great a charm wherever found. Let us im- 
agine that upon each of us should descend the 
quietness of heart which, showing itself in qui- 
etness of manner and friendliness of approach, 
would make us invariably amiable to children, 
to servants, to all whom we met. Fault-find- 
ing would vanish from the fireside and the 
table, and suspicion, anger, jealousy, all evil 
things, would be disarmed. So might this 
earthly life of ours be patterned after that of 
another sphere ; take on a heavenly peace and 
charm. 

In our study of the Master's life with his 
disciples, andof their life after his presence had 



134 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

been withdrawn from them, we are impressed 
by the beautiful care for little things, and the 
constant thoughtfulness and grace which were 
as the stamp upon the coin in that little band. 
Never rush or hurry or haste in the Saviour, 
never forgetfulness of the weary, never any- 
thing but love and tenderness and the sweet- 
ness of a friend, and the brotherliness of a 
comrade. And John and James and Peter re- 
peat this spirit in their epistles. Paul, catch- 
ing the inspiration from the Lord, who called 
him out of the rifted skies to be an apostle, is 
overflowing with love-messages to the saints to 
whom he writes. In the New Testament, if 
anywhere, we abide in a great company of gen- 
tle folk. 

Among unthinking persons there sometimes 
prevails a little doubt of the sincerity of those 
who have more manner than themselves, "I 
am blunt, I speak my mind," I once heard a 
woman exclaim, as though there were some 
merit in brusqueness, and as though truth and 
candor had a quarrel with urbanity. On the 
other hand, if these people would but notice, 
truth may be spoken in love, and love can al- 
ways afford to wear a guise of frankness that 



GENTLE FOLK. 135 

is winning. Not long ago in a church where a 
good deal of work was going on, several wo- 
men met to discuss ways and means. There 
were diametrical differences of opinion, and 
some of the number expressed their views with 
vehemence, but there was no friction. As one 
phrased it, they were all ladies, and they were 
all honorable ; and so, having spoken out their 
thoughts and wishes, they yielded without a 
murmur to the decision of the majority. 

In the ordinary conversation of the best 
bred men and women there should be some- 
thing uplifting. No reflection on others, on 
their motives, on their mistakes, on their fail- 
ures should appear. When we have nothing 
kind to say, let us keep silence. The path, con- 
versationally, of the gentlewoman is hedged in 
from any gossip that is malicious, and of 
course, from the use of anything that suggests 
the low plane that is false or unworthy. 

The manners of little children are so often 
unconsciously copied from the grown people 
around them that we need to exercise peculiar 
care when the wee ones are about us. If we 
would know the father and mother, we need 
only study the boys and girls. Quite surely, 



136 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

though without knowledge or intention, they 
reveal the vogue of their home, they are imi- 
tative and absorbent as we all are, and in ges- 
ture, smile, tone, and mode they reproduce 
what goes on around them. We cannot too 
carefully watch ourselves, we who are parents 
and teachers, in the interests of those who are 
carrying on to the future what both directly 
and indirectly they are learning from us. 

One of these days we shall migrate from 
these shores of clamor and disturbance and 
reach a world where ' 'beyond these voices 
there is peace." It will be a world of strange 
beauty and sweetness, that beautiful home of 
the blessed. In it there shall be neither sorrow 
nor crying nor any more pain; no wars, no 
confusion, no parting, no disappointment. 
There the Lord will reign forever, and his ser- 
vants shall serve him. And that fair harbor of 
God's saints shall be wholly inhabited by the 
pure, the pardoned, the sinless, and the blissful, 
forever doing God's errands, thinking God's 
thoughts, singing his praises, a world of gentle 
folk. 

But at present we are pilgrims faring on the 
road, accepting its rough and smooth, subject 



GENTLE FOLK. 137 

to human infirmity and liable to errors of judg- 
ment and vision. To be good comrades we 
must needs walk in the steps of our Master, 
making our daily lives an imitation of Christ, 
and striving stubbornly against sin. We must 
have daily re-enforcements from a source that 
never fails; we must live by prayer and look 
ever upward. 



A Lenten Meditation 



" In our Lenten meditations we may as well be 
candid with ourselves. God sees us as we are." 




CHAPTER XI. 

A LENTEN MEDITATION. 

T/T y /'^ live in a period of intense activity. 
f/ fr Leisure is the privilege of the 
few. Work, ceaseless, pressing, 
relentless, is the obligation of the many. 
Events are happening all the time, wonderful 
epoch-making events, and they follow one an- 
other at intervals so brief, and the pace of the 
age is so rapid, that meditation has become ex- 
ceptional. Who has time to sit down and 
think? Most of us snatch a few fleeting mo- 
ments for daily reading, and set apart a little 
longer time for daily prayer; but, even then, 
the world invades the quiet hour, and we hurry 
out of the closet and are presently again in the 
thick of the fight. 

Lent, which is observed definitely by a large 
part of the Christian Church, and in a less co- 



142 THE DAILY PATHWAY, 

herent but sympathetic fashion by individuals 
and denominations not pledged to keep it, 
comes with a blessed arresting power in the 
whirl of our avocations. Thus, in the Middle 
Ages, might a truce have been proclaimed on 
the battlefield, while the hosts released from 
warfare found a space to breathe and be at 
peace. The modern warfare is as incessant as, 
and far more pitiless, than were those old con- 
flicts, and the combatants receive wounds 
which leave scars. How we long sometimes 
when "the world is too much with us," for 
something of the child's freedom from care, 
the child's joy in mere living, that we so often 
lose when the battles of life harden and weary 
us ! Our Lord told us in effect that we must 
have the child heart if we would enter the 
kingdom of heaven. And he told us, too, that 
the kingdom of heaven must be, if we have it 
at all, within us. 

Lent gives us pause. Let us stop where we 
are and honestly demand of our own souls how 
much of the child's sweet truthfulness and of 
the heavenly kingdom's bliss remains as our 
precious treasure? What are we striving for? 
The aims of our conduct are probably not 



A LENTEN MEDITATION. 143 

wholly selfish. At least we toil for others. 
Some of us have children to educate, and we 
are literally straining every nerve that their ad- 
vantages may surpass those we had in a sim- 
pler day. We are so anxious about this that 
we forget that the education which is forced 
upon children who reluctantly accept it, will 
never do them very much good. Some of us 
are trying to lay away a sufficient provision for 
old age and the rainy day. This is right, if in 
doing so we are careful not to atrophy our 
sense of gratitude to God and our trust in him, 
by a failure to worship him in giving of our 
substance. I knew an old lady who wore a fur 
cloak in July because she was afraid of ulti- 
mately going to the poorhouse. The connec- 
tion is not obvious, but she was so parsimoni- 
ous in her terror of impending want that she 
would buy no summer wraps, and therefore 
had to use her winter ones the year round. 
She died a woman of wealth, in whom hoard- 
ing had grown to a mastering passion — hers 
being selfish ends — and she was at heart a 
pauper. Far otherwise is it with those who 
toil and save and are anxious that they may 
clear off a mortgage or pay hampering debts. 



144 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

But, for one or another reason, most of us 
carry so much needless weight that we lose the 
pleasure of our days; we are not as the little 
children free from care. 

"Nothing," says Dr. Pusey, u is too little to 
be ordered by our Father; nothing too little in 
which to see his hand ; nothing which touches 
our souls too little to accept from him ; nothing 
too little to be done for him." 

Let us — 

"Tell him about the heartache, 

And tell him the longings, too, 
Tell him the baffled purpose, 

When we scarce knew what to do. 
Then, leaving all our weakness 

With the One, divinely strong, 
Forget that we bore the burden 

And carry away the song." 

Time will not be misspent in which we shall 
consider gratefully the goodness of our Father 
in heaven. Suppose we make a business for 
the next few weeks of looking up in God's 
word the promises he gives us of his presence 
in every hour of need. They gleam like stars 
in the sky when the firmament is swept clear 
from clouds. The Father is ever waiting to 



A LENTEN MEDITATION. 145 

hear our prayer, ready at every moment when 
we knock to admit us, and his compassions fail 
not. Blessed are the Lenten hours in which we 
leave the world behind and approach "the 
mercy seat, where Jesus answers prayer," and 
the Spirit gives us utterance ! 

Another phase of the subject of our per- 
sonal religion may appeal to us as we sit in the 
twilight of these days of early spring. A few 
weeks ago the trees were leafless, the gardens 
withered, the grasses brown, the birds were 
silent. Insensibly to our observation a change 
has begun. The bluebirds are venturing back. 
The robins will follow. In sheltered corners 
timid flowers are lifting their sweet, shy 
faces. Soon there will be melody and 
verdure and bloom where lately were chill 
and desolation. The spring is here. Soon 
her gracious presence will be manifest every- 
where. 

Analogous to this phenomenon of Nature 
so familiar, yet so impressive, is that which 
occurs in many a human experience. A revival 
of religion transforms the individual. I have 
heard people declare that they do not believe 
in revivals. They might quite as well insist 



146 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

that they do not believe in the spring. God 
sends both. When any one has been cold and 
lifeless in prayer, formal and uninterested in 
service, apathetic in attention, and careless of 
love to the brethren, he needs a revival. A 
new breath of the Divine Spirit quickens and 
vitalizes him. The spring has found him, he 
has been renovated. "Awake, O north wind, 
and come thou south, blow upon my garden," 
says the Lord of the garden, and then, "the 
spices flow forth," and there is perfume and 
gladness. 

The March gales will rage furiously over 
land and sea; their stormy energy will 
drive out the rubbish from corners and 
sweep the earth clean. Some souls need 
the cleansing processes of a tempest before 
they are ready to bring forth sweet fruits 
and flowers. Whether by one form of 
discipline or another, by the surge of the 
rough sea or the spray of the fountain, the 
Lord chooses to awaken and revive us, so that 
he does it, and we see the realities of things in 
his illuminating light, all will be well with our 
souls. 

In a word, let us pray now for a revival of 



A LENTEN MEDITATION. 147 

love in God in our heart-life, for more loyalty 
to Christ, for a deeper filling of the Spirit. 
"My beloved is mine, and his desire is toward 
me." If we usk in faith, nothing doubting, we 
shall not be denied. 

The Lenten season has another aspect, and 
it concerns what some of us fancy to be the 
more practical side of our duty. What are we 
doing for others? The question is objective. 
It means for the poor, who are always near us 
— round the corner or across the way, if we 
live in a city like New York. In this thronged 
town we watch long processions of sumptuous 
equipages on one street, women richly arrayed 
driving in carriages a queen might envy; men 
hasting from this place to that, wearing the 
look of prosperity in every lineament; and in 
the next avenue gaunt and squalid poverty 
stalks in rags and tatters. We cannot escape 
the sight of the poor — the repulsive, not the 
picturesque, sight of the suffering and the beg- 
gared. 

To relieve, to elevate, to comfort, to sus- 
tain, our friends who are poor, is but to accept 
a privilege. "Naked and ye clothed me" earns 
the blessing of the Saviour's "inasmuch." We 



148 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

may take our choice of methods. The Neigh- 
borhood Settlement offers us an opportunity to 
help the city poor in the most delicate, loving 
and good-Samaritan way. Helping them, 
they will help us. No one can enter into hu- 
man and brotherly relations with the poor and 
not discover that they have as much to give as 
they receive. Their ministrations to one an- 
other are on a scale of liberality, when com- 
pared with their narrow means, which shames 
the grudging generosity of the more fortunate. 
A poor woman does not stop to ask, "Is my 
neighbor worthy?" Her inquiry is rather, "Is 
my neighbor in want?" In these latter days 
the sack of coals, so hardly obtained, has been 
shared, and the laundress has halved her scanty 
fire with her friend; the homeless children 
have been taken in when the little rooms were 
already crowded, and the outflow of gentle 
charity among the tenement dwellers has not 
been frozen up by zero temperature. By all 
means, if we love our Lord, let us deny 
ourselves that we may serve his poor in 
friendly, not in patronizing or condescending 
ways. 

In this contemplation of the beckoning 



A LENTEN MEDITATION. 149 

hands which lead us into avenues of service, 
we may take a thought of those who, by 
reason of age or infirmity, are laid aside. 
They have the gratification of every material 
need. They are well clad, well housed, but 
pain racks their bodies, or loneliness preys 
upon their minds. I have a sympathy, too 
profound for words, with a man or woman 
whose day of activity is over and who realizes 
that the time has arrived when there is nothing 
for it but to sit by the side of the road while 
the procession passes. Undoubtedly some 
take this position too soon. It is a mistake to 
withdraw from the occupations of a lifetime 
before one must. But some are infirm of sight 
or hearing, or they halt by reason of tottering 
limbs. The grasshopper has become a burden. 
And there falls on such a deep shadow when 
they deem themselves overlooked. At times 
there is a bitter feeling that they are superflu- 
ous. Among the most gentle, graceful, and 
truly Christian ministries open to young peo- 
ple, or to those who have strength and leisure, 
we may count visiting the afflicted. How 
blessed to be a bearer of sunbeams ! 

A young girl went to pay a call upon a man 



150 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

in his ninetieth year. She carried flowers to 
the venerable friend, and sat by his chair, chat- 
ting with him of the little happenings of the 
town. When she took her leave, "God bless 
you, my dear/' he said; "it was lovely in you 
to come and bring these flowers; you, so 
young, to me, so old!" 

One other suggestion may be pardoned. 
Are we as vigilant as we should be in restrain- 
ing our tendency to fault-finding and quarrel- 
ing and bickering in the home ? Are we self- 
controlled and not perverse among our dear 
ones? Too often the happiness of the house- 
hold is flawed by the selfishness, the moodi- 
ness, and the ill-temper of some one in the 
circle who imposes upon the family states of 
mind and boorishness of manner which would 
not be tolerated in the office or in society. 
Cross-grained Christians blot the brightness of 
their escutcheon and diminish the honor of 
their Lord. In our Lenten meditations we 
may as well be candid with ourselves. God 
sees us as we are. If he can bear with us, we 
may thank him and honestly ask him to make 
us better-natured and more amiable in the 
home, in the privacy of the domestic group, 



A LENTEN MEDITATION. 151 

where we are off guard simply because among 
our closest kindred and our best beloved. 

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." The ideal is not 
too high, nor should we shrink from endeavor- 
ing to reach it, since it is the plain command 
of our divine Leader. 



Our Raster Joy 

M 

" Oh ! weary heart, forget to sigh : 
God sends thee Easter Day! " 




CHAPTER XII. 

OUR EASTER JOT. 

TyT7"HEN Spring comes back, radiant in 
y y sunshine, with cheery winds, un- 
fettered streams, and flowers em- 
broidering her garments new, we feel the pulse 
of a gladness that fills the whole earth. 

Easter comes, too, in the Springtime; the 
coronation of the year, the triumphant festival 
of the Christian Church, comes, bringing the 
exultant memories of the Resurrection. What- 
ever have been our sorrows, we are called in 
the Easter-tide to rejoice, called with uplifted 
heart and voice to sing "The Lord is risen." 
Once again our hearts are stirred by the won- 
derful story of our Saviour's death upon the 
cross. On Good Friday we enter again into 
the gloom and the shadow, realizing how our 
redemption was won, trying to appreciate, 



156 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

though faintly, the price that was paid when 
Jesus said, "It is finished I" 

Then, in the glory and the gladness of East- 
er morning we carry our flowers to adorn the 
church, and our songs arise, in unison with the 
songs of the ransomed, their burden "He is 
risen !" 

Many a home has been bereft of some loved 
one since last Easter shone in the pomp of 
lilies and throbbed with the splendor of organ- 
chords pealing magnificent anthems. Over 
every household in the land hangs always un- 
seen the suspended sword that may fall at a 
breath and take hence the most precious in the 
family — husband, wife, child, parent. Yet we 
are not unhappy. Neither the shadow of a 
coming woe nor the weight of a present afflic- 
tion can depress or crush those who believe 
with their whole hearts in the Lord, who died 
and rose again. He tasted death for every 
man, and when he stepped from the darkness 
of Joseph's tomb into the dawn-light in the 
garden where Mary saw his face and heard his 
voice, he conquered death for every man. 
Well may we bear our losses and our loneliness 
when the door that opens outward opens into 



OUR EASTER JOY. 157 

immortality, and the Easter-light drives away 
our gloom and quickens our faith and shows us 
the Lamb that was slain, the One on whose 
head are many crowns, waiting to receive 
his own when they go home, in accord- 
ance with the words which he spoke to his dis- 
ciples : 

u In my Father's house are many mansions. 
If it were not so, I would have told you. I go 
to prepare a place for you." 

This Easter talk is to concern itself with 
other than the trials that rend our souls asun- 
der and change the landscape of our lives. 
God sends calamity and gives the strength to 
endure it. But we cannot lay upon our 
Father in Heaven the blame for the burdens 
we make for ourselves. 

Take, for instance, the case of a married 
pair who have lived together, sharing life's 
ups-and-downs for a quarter of a century. Sud- 
denly, without reason or excuse, one turns 
coldly from the other. In a home profaned by 
this evil temper, I have seen husband and wife 
sitting at the same table, dwelling under the 
same roof, warmed at the same hearth-flame, 
yet hardly speaking to one another for days. I 



158 THE DAILY PATHWAY, 

have seen estrangement and feud between 
brothers and sisters, the relentless grasp of an 
unforgiven act keeping children of one blood, 
nursed by one mother, as far apart as East 
from West. Life's daily path is strewn with 
wrecks because humanity is so often self-willed, 
so often unkind, so often deaf to common 
sense and common justice. Only as families 
love one another, shield each other from the 
criticism of outsiders, do all in their power to 
veil faults and defects, and remain united in a 
bond that is indissoluble, can they hope for 
happiness. 

Away with needless distresses from our 
pathway ! Why do we cumber ourselves with 
unprofitable luggage? Why are we so ready 
to suffer human vanity, and selfishness, and 
foolish caprice ? Why do we take indefensible 
dislikes, and permit prejudices to erect barriers 
between ourselves and good people who might 
become our friendly comrades? Why, in- 
deed, unless because we are fallible beings, 
who see only one side of a matter and 
take little pains to see the view-point of 
others. 

Peep of day for any who are overborne by 



OUR EASTER JOY. 159 

needless distresses, will break when we are hon- 
estly inclined to repentance, and when we fear- 
lessly seek the help of our ever-pitiful Friend 
and Master Jesus Christ. 

Peep of day will never come to any one who 
stubbornly refuses to concede that possibly he 
or she may be in the wrong. The people who 
are always right in their own eyes, no matter 
how far they have strayed from the straight 
and narrow path, are almost hopeless. Until 
one can acknowledge sin, one cannot seek 
pardon. Until one perceives that he or 
she is in error, one will not change a mis- 
taken course by even a hair's breadth. But 
the day will break and the shadows flee 
away, soon and fast, for all who are can- 
did in confession, and who forget the past 
and begin over; if they have been wrong, 
begin over — begin lovingly. Not to dwell in 
love with one's very own is to commit a 
daily sin against that God whose name is 
Love. 

The earliest bluebird, brave herald of a vast 
throng, sings under the window so soon as a 
mild day pledges other days full of cheer and 
gay with glancing wings and waking bloom. 



i6o THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Back again they haste, the little friends who 
build their nests in our eaves and make music 
for us at morning and evening. They have 
not worried lest Spring should never return. 
Peep of day fills their tiny lives with such an 
overflow of sweetness that it arouses an an- 
swering gladness in us, who do not so quickly 
acquire the art of resting confidently in our 
Father's care. He who never forgets so much 
as the smallest creature he has made will not 
forget us in our hours of need. 

Nothing in Nature is more exquisite than 
the tender leafage of the orchards and groves 
in that ecstatic moment when the new buds un- 
crease and the earth is all a glimmering vista of 
green and gold. The miracle of Spring un- 
folds itself before our wondering eyes, as by 
thousands upon thousands, like the multitudi- 
nous sands on the shore, or the innumerable 
ripples on the ocean, or the countless stars in 
the sky, the leaf-spray rises into the tidal-wave 
of Spring. 

It is a pity, is it not, that some of us lose the 
enjoyment of this most beautiful time because 
we let utility swamp beauty in our walk and 
conversation? The first fair days when we 



OUR EASTER JOY. 161 

ought to be out of doors breathing deep 
breaths, feasting our souls, drinking from Na- 
ture's chalice, we are up in the attic, on our 
knees before old chests, standing on step-lad- 
ders and chairs and pulling down cobwebs, 
delving into closets and investigating nooks 
and corners, in a fury of spring housecleaning. 
This, dear women, ye ought of course to do, 
but not, please note, to leave the other undone. 
Housecleaning may be deferred without harm 
to anybody, but Nature will not postpone her 
transformation scene; and if you would hear 
bird-songs, and see new leaves, and find violets 
and trailing arbutus, and watch for snowdrops 
and jonquils and daffodils, you must choose to 
enjoy Nature's treat in Nature's time. In old 
days a fabled fountain of youth allured pil- 
grims to go on distant journeys, with the daz- 
zling vision before them of age vanquished 
and health reinforced. The fountain of youth 
exists. They bathe in it who live near Na- 
ture's heart. For them, though the outward 
man perish, the inward is renewed day by day, 
and the spirit keeps the gayety of the child, till 
the flesh falling away leaves it free for the 
youth of heaven. 



1 62 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

I question seriously whether we grown peo- 
ple play enough for our own good. We work 
tremendously and rest under protest. We 
spend so much energy on the machinery of liv- 
ing, on our money-making, our necessary labor 
for the support of our families, on the immedi- 
ate "must-haves" of life, that we get no time 
to live. A man should not forget that he was 
once a boy, a woman that she was the other 
day a girl. Keep the child-heart. Play with 
the children. Do whatever is for you, as a 
grown-up person, the equivalent of play. For 
one it may be going about with a camera and 
taking pictures; for another, an afternoon on 
the links playing golf; for another, baseball; 
for another, a reading circle, where a few con- 
genial friends meet, read a good book and dis- 
cuss it. Some one else may find recreation in 
artistic pursuits, in lace-making, in fancy-work, 
in painting on china. A hobby or a fad is the 
usual pastime-resource of those who can no 
longer play as the children do, but who are not 
out of the game and never mean to be left out. 
We cannot be at our best in our work if we 
never allow ourselves the least relaxation. In- 
stead of drifting into premature invalidism 



OUR EASTER JOY. 163 

and becoming martyrs at the stake of nervous 
suffering, let us use the measures of wise pre- 
vention. It is much easier to rest when one is 
healthily weary than when one is all worn out. 
Mothers need this caution more than any 
other people, mothers with their manifold lit- 
tle cares — the children clinging about them, 
the house to look after, the thronging petty 
anxieties that makes such incursions on 
strength and cheer. When a young mother is 
taken away from her brood, who are left, like 
callow fledglings, to the care of other hands, 
never so tender as mother-hands, one cannot 
but wonder whether it is always by the dispen- 
sation of God. It is by the permission of God, 
or it would not occur. Yet God requires of 
none of us more than we can give; and there 
are mothers who toil terribly, who work early 
and late, making elaborate frocks and keeping 
a scrupulously tidy home when they ought 
rather to let things go, and dress the children 
simply and take better care of their own selves. 
Peep or day for mothers will break when 
they rightly value their health, when they save 
their strength for the adolescence of their chil- 
dren, and keep mentally and intellectually 



1 64 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

abreast of them, at least so far that they may 
sympathize with them in the race. 

All this somewhat desultory talk fits into the 
Easter mood. And so let us sing : 

"The golden sun climbs up the sky, 

The shadows flee away, 
Oh ! weary heart, forget to sigh : 

God sends thee Easter Day ! 
Long was the night, and chill the air, 

The darkness lingered long, 
Yet is the morning bright and fair, 

Uplift thine Easter song. 

The cross that bowed thee with its weight 

By strength of prayer is stirred, 
Until it bear thee soon or late 

As wings upbear the bird. 
The life that thrills from star to star, 

And beats in leaf and stem, 
Is wider than the heavens are 

And blesses thee from them. 

"Not held of death, the King went forth 
From out its shattered prison : 
Oh, tell it, utmost South and North, 
To-day 'The Lord is risen !' " 



Summer Holidays 



11 May our summer holiday give us more of that 
dear intimacy with Christ which is the most 
heavenly experience ever lived on earth." 




CHAPTER XIII. 

SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 

S~\ NE feature of our present-day living in 
\^/ America is in somewhat marked con- 
trast with the practices that obtained 
a few years ago. We have realized as never 
before the importance of rest and change of 
scene. School and college vacations are longer 
than formerly, and business houses very gen- 
erally not only accord the weekly half-holi- 
days, but provide liberally for the respite from 
toil of their employes. Travel is cheaper, too, 
than of old, and people of moderate means are 
able to visit places about which their fathers 
and mothers read, without the least expecta- 
tion of beholding them with their own eyes. 
But this talk of mine is not altogether written 
for those who enjoy summer holidays; it is 
partly intended for friends to whom summer 



: : 5 THE BAIL Y PJ THJTJ Y. 



IX- 



- -t :.tt 7::-: 






SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 169 

like crystal, her verandas were spotless, and 
though she was continually at work, her dress 
matched her house in its immaculate neatness. 
But she grew pitifully white and wan and tired 
out before her ministry to her summer guests 
came to an end with the crisp autumnal 
breezes. 

To the overburdened women, of whom this 
one is a type, I would address a word of coun- 
sel. It is poor policy to wear out; one should 
be willing to make a little less during the sea- 
son of financial harvest and have a little more 
to show in the item of health when accounts 
are balanced in the fall. Do not so crowd 
your houses that you must give up the com- 
forts of your own room and put up with a 
makeshift in the garret or the barn. Employ 
a sufficient force in the kitchen; the man of 
the house has extra help in times of extra pres- 
sure, but the wife is apt to fancy that there is 
praiseworthy thrift in working as hard as she 
can and getting along with little aid from out- 
side. Always take an afternoon rest, and 
though sleep may be coy, for it is not every 
woman who can take a nap in daylight, un- 
dress, relax, and lie still in a darkened cham- 



170 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

ber for an hour. Never omit the refreshment 
of a sponge bath before retiring at night. 
When the Sabbath comes, arrange an easier 
rather than a more elaborate menu, and go to 
church. If there were no spiritual elevation, 
no gain to the soul from church-going, the 
positive gain to the wearied body would be 
sufficient to commend church-going to women 
in the country whose days are one round of 
care. 

"I've heard folk say they were too tired to 
go to church," said a dear old lady in a Con- 
necticut hamlet. "I don't understand them. 
Why it's the only place where I ever sit still 
and fold my hands." Church-going on the 
part of the mistress of the house will set an 
example that many of her temporary house- 
hold will be fain to follow, and all will return 
the happier and the more uplifted for having 
worshiped the Lord in his own house on his 
own day. 

Summer holidays attract the tourist who 
wishes to see something of an unfamiliar coun- 
tryside in the briefest available space, and to 
him they bring a temptation to break the Sab- 
bath. Well for the man whose principles are 



SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 171 

so firmly established that he does not permit 
any specious argument to persuade him to 
spend any part of the sacred day in traveling. 
The silent witness borne by the Christian men 
and women who refuse to take a train or a 
goat on the Sabbath for any reason connected 
with business or pleasure is invaluable. In va- 
cation days most of us, if away from the safe 
home moorings, may have an opportunity to 
so spend our Sabbaths that no one may mis- 
take our Christian character. 

A young girl the other day told me that dur- 
ing her summer holidays she intended to study 
a specialty quite different from her ordinary 
profession. "I shall find rest in a change of 
employment," she said, u and I feel that I wish 
to add something to my resources, so that 
when I give up teaching, if ever I do, I may 
have another outlet for my efforts." Many 
teachers are similarly prudent, and they take a 
portion of their holiday for summer work. 
What they do that they may be better fitted 
for the classroom might be done by students 
in every department and by younger pupils 
with advantage. There is no adequate reason 
for dropping out of the working part of the 



172 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

year six or eight or ten weeks of summer, if 
one has so long an interval at command. One 
may take some new reading, some different 
line of investigation, to one's pleasure and 
profit. And the mother with her children may 
find real joy in the diverting study of nature, 
in botany or geology, during the summer days. 
For a boy of twelve or fourteen, or a girl of 
the same age, to deliberately drop all study 
during a lengthy vacation, is to lose a habit of 
attention and to form a habit of wasteful 
pleasure seeking. 

A good deal is done in these days of practi- 
cal Christian endeavor to give greater facilities 
for recreation to those who are in danger of 
being left out. Who are they? Our Master 
said, "The poor ye have always with you," 
and in our thronged cities they elbow us on 
every side. Walk through any crowded quar- 
ter in the tenement districts and the needy are 
there. They do not, however, clamor for 
alms, nor hold out their hands for charity. 
Among the poorest there is much of that de- 
cent self-respect which shrinks from revealing 
its need, of that proper pride which will by no 
means ask a gratuity. Also among the very 



SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 173 

poor there is an immense amount of cheerful 
generosity, and of kindness which is unosten- 
tatious yet bountiful, which asks no return and 
which costs self-sacrifice. A Christian woman 
who has a beautiful country home near New 
York has for many years given a weekly sum- 
mer holiday to people who could not afford it 
if it had to be paid for with money. She sets 
aside one day in the week, and in the family 
vocabulary it is known as "Friends' Day." 
Her grounds are breezy and spacious, her car- 
riages meet at the train the twelve or fourteen 
invited guests, who, with or without their 
babies, have come at her expense from their 
homes, the railway fare being included in the 
treat; and when the carriages stop and the 
guests are helped out, they are made at home 
for the day in orchard, on lawn, on hillside, or 
wherever they choose to go. During the mid- 
summer solstice these favored visitors count 
the weeks until their turn comes for this idyllic 
entertainment, and surely the blessing of the 
Lord will abide with her who thus tenderly 
ministers to his little ones. Those whose privi- 
lege it cannot be to minister thus personally to 
Christ's poor may contribute, according to 



174 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

their means, to the guilds and fresh-air funds, 
and other enterprises which assist the feeble or 
the impoverished during the hot season. 

Among those who may claim from us our 
tenderest sympathy are some who have no ma- 
terial lack, who have money enough for their 
support, and very probably for luxury as well 
as comfort, but yet who are stranded like dere- 
licts on the lee shore of life. Old people, last 
survivors of their own circle, isolated *by reason 
of infirmity, blind or in fear of blindness, deaf, 
and therefore excluded from much that is in- 
teresting, captious or irritable because of an- 
other generation, and suffering from loneli- 
ness, are apt to feel the dreariness of the sum- 
mer. For under all its gayety and gladness it 
has its undertone of sorrow, and they hear it, 
like the far-off beat of the breakers on a deso- 
late beach. 

A young woman never appears more win- 
some than when she devotes herself unobtru- 
sively to the amusement or the cheer of some 
elderly person who is on the edge of every- 
thing and whose loneliness is a dead weight on 
the spirit. Attentions to the old must be both 
sincere and tactful, for anything not genuine 



SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 175 

is repulsive, and none so quickly resent super- 
fluous aid as they who are aware that their sun 
is declining. 

Among those who seldom have, yet who 
would appreciate a regular summer vacation, 
are domestic servants. Of course, the tenure 
of service is so uncertain and its term so short 
in many homes, that it does not occur to the 
mistress to offer the maid a vacation. In 
households where the bond is one of friend- 
ship, as well as of wages, and Mary, Jane, of 
Martha, Norah, or Bridget stays on from year 
to year, the summer plans should provide for 
her a summer rest. A whole week to spend at 
no cost to her purse, with her people at home, 
the wages paid as usual, but the maid 
free from the obligation to cook, wash, iron or 
sweep in her employer's house, would be a 
boon in a life that has in it much of wearing 
monotony. In the best conditions, women age 
very rapidly in service, and some chance 
should be offered them whenever it is practica- 
ble to secure variety and relaxation. 

Singularly, the summer holidays that are so 
buoyant, and so beneficial to the fortunate ones 
who share their delights, are often periods of 



176 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

strain for those who depend for daily bread 
on the presence of people at home. A good 
many well-to-do people absent from town 
means a dull season, and the dropping of other 
people from certain pay-rolls. Contributions 
to charities sometimes fall off in summer, and 
salaries remain unpaid because funds are low. 
An almost empty exchequer in a settlement or 
an asylum or a hospital means and causes dis- 
tress and delinquency in paying those who 
carry forward the work. Thoughtless people 
go away for a summer outing, leaving a trail 
of small unpaid accounts behind them, and so 
the corner grocer and the butcher and the fish- 
man suffer. Otherwise honorable persons 
have no hesitation whatever in leaving a doc- 
tor's bill unpaid for months, never thinking of 
this most useful family friend, unless there is 
illness in the home, when indeed they can 
hardly wait for his coming. If summer is to 
bring joy to every one, then every one must *be 
fair and just. The eternal foundation of hap- 
piness must be a rock bottom of justice. 

Our summer holidays, whether passed at 
home abiding by the stuff, or in rambles far 
afield, whether we hear the music of the s\irf 



SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 177 

or the melody of the winds, whether we linger 
in the valley or climb to the mountain top, 
should bring us nearer God. In their leisure 
let us more than ever study our Bibles, and 
more than ever commune with God in prayer. 

In this world there are disciples who run on 
Christ's errands and who till his vineyard. 
There are those who go with Christ into the 
secret place, and share with him his anxious 
search for the lost, and there are others still 
more favored who sit at the table with him 
and lean on his breast. May our summer holi- 
day give us more of that dear intimacy with 
Christ which is the most heavenly experience 
ever lived on the earth. 



Summer Sabbath- Keeping 



" Whoever loves his native land and fears God 
must be concerned in the question of Sabbath- 
keeping the whole year round." 




CHAPTER XIV. 

SUMMER SABBATH 
KEEPING. 

T/TT^ HY there should be a special temp- 
y y tation to break the Sabbath in 
summer, rather than in winter, is 
one of those things that are puzzling on the 
surface. Winter brings its formidable storms, 
its rigors of cold, its hardships of many sorts ; 
why should we not hug the fireside then, if 
ever, and forsake attendance on the sanctu- 
ary ? Summer comes with skies of the bland- 
est, with genial airs, with perfumed censors 
swinging from a thousand flowers, with more 
or less relaxation of business cares and bur- 
dens, yet in precisely these soft and agreeable 
conditions, in this charming environment, even 
Christian people with established principles, 
are apt to let down the bars. If at home, they 
declare that the day is too hot, or too enervat- 
ing to stir abroad, or they delay needful prepa- 



1 82 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

ration until it is too late to start, so that the 
pastor must deliver his message to empty 
pews. 

On the part of the conscientious there is a 
fiction very generally believed as a verity that 
those who do not go to church spend the Sab- 
bath at home in religious reading and devout 
contemplation. Honestly, a large portion of 
the remainder-contingent who have not energy 
to dress and go forth on Sunday, having been 
compelled to do so by peremptory week-day 
claims for six days, intend to devote them- 
selves to the Bible and the sermon-books or 
missionary biographies in the home library. 
They read a chapter or two, perhaps four or 
five chapters, and they dip into the good book, 
but there are secular papers and enticing mag- 
azines close by, and insensibly these prove an 
alluring bait. In days when the rules were 
more stringent and the atmosphere more tonic 
than now, mothers used to lay aside the secular 
literature of the home on Saturday afternoon, 
and on Sabbath morning it was not to be found 
by the most diligent seeker. Reappearing on 
Monday, it brought with it the appropriate 
week-day dress and tone, but it did not invade 



SUMMER SABBATH KEEPING. 183 

the one sweet and hushed rest-day. On Satur- 
day night, as the mother tucked it away on its 
shelf, she might have waved her hand and 
said, "Beyond these voices there is peace." 
Nobody puts it out of sight or mind now ; the 
very children in a thousand homes of other 
and more sacred traditions, look for their own 
page in the big Sunday newspaper, and the air 
of sweet and sacred tranquillity has gone 
from our Lord's day. The people who do 
not go to church do not spend their hours 
in any specially religious or spiritually 
elevating exercises. If they fancy they 
do, they cheat themselves. After a little 
they cease to feel uneasiness on the subject, and 
quite readily yield up the hours that are not 
their own to the pursuits that are anything but 
in line with the purpose and meaning of the 
hallowed day. 

Away from home in an inn among stran- 
gers, or on beach or mountain top, people who 
in their own bailiwick permit no license to 
themselves or their families seem often to feel 
at liberty to do as they please. There are 
rural neighborhoods where no sail whitens the 
waters, and no oar cuts the waves on the Sab- 



1 84 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

bath, where men do not bicycle, nor drive, nor 
ride, nor take out their automobiles, and where 
a blessed quiet reigns profoundly through the 
sacred day. But these are rare. In many sub- 
urban places, a howling, shrieking, shouting 
crowd of the baser sort comes on trolley and by 
steam or boat every Sunday, making the pleas- 
ant places hideous and picnicking in sight of 
the sanctuary. This would never have become 
possible had those who reverenced the 
Sabbath not set an example of indifference 
first. 

What is the manifest obligation of the 
Christian, at home, or in absence, in town or in 
country, if in health, on the Sabbath day? 
First and foremost to attend public worship. 
By simply doing this, by taking a seat in a pew, 
by listening to the preacher, by joining in 
prayer and praise, he or she ranges as an indi- 
vidual on the right side; and as an individual 
without other spoken word, without ostenta- 
tion or offensive righteousness in assumption, 
shows that recognition of God's authority is 
part of his or her very life and soul. Having 
attended church, the gain that comes from 
obedience, and from mingling with others who 



SUMMER SABBATH KEEPING. 185 

follow on to know the Lord, flows into the 
life. 

It is a fact that servants find the day that 
should bring them rest the hardest day of the 
whole seven. A more elaborate dinner than 
usual and a very general entertaining of guests 
on the Sabbath, has doubled and trebled the 
work of Mary and Bridget in the kitchen. By 
the time the many difficult dishes are prepared 
and served, and the ceremonious meal cleared 
away, the woman is weary, and she hastens, 
if it be her afternoon out, to imitate her em- 
ployers, by a round of visiting and perhaps of 
entertaining in her own circle and her own 
home. A simpler menu, less formality and no 
formal visiting or receiving on the Sabbath 
would greatly improve our home Sabbaths, 
and this applies rather more to the present 
warm season than to colder weather, since the 
trend of the period is to make the Sabbath a 
day of worldly amusement. The golf-links 
are visited in the afternoon by those who go to 
church in the morning, the excuse being that 
physical recreation is a necessity, and on purely 
logical grounds it is difficult to see why there 
is more harm in playing golf or tennis on Sun- 



1 86 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

day than in having friends in to purely social 
teas and suppers. If you suffer license on any 
point, why not on all? The only real safety is 
to allow no letting down of the standard. 

Our ideal of the Sabbath as a day of rest 
from worldly engagements does not permit us 
to draw a line perpendicularly through our 
practice, rigidly forbidding us to be occupied 
with work, and allowing us to work hard at 
play. The latter is right in its place, but its 
place is not on the one day set apart for the 
cultivation of our spiritual nature. Inertia and 
mere inactivity are not specially commenda- 
ble either. What we should aim at rather is 
some employment of Sabbath time that is in its 
degree not only restful, but also inspiring and 
stimulating. 

Every household should, if possible, have 
its service of song on the hallowed day. A 
daughter who can play the piano may lead 
the rest, and either in the morning or the even- 
ing all may gather and sing hymns and psalms 
to God's praise. 

When, by reason of mismanagement, the 
Sabbath is a gloomy and tedious day for chil- 
dren, a great wrong has been done them. And 



SUMMER SABBATH KEEPING. 187 

great is the pity of such a blunder. No day 
should be so happy, so welcome, so eagerly an- 
ticipated as this. For one thing, the father is 
at home, and that ought to make the day a fes- 
tival. On other days the man of the house 
must hurry off to business, urged by the spur 
of necessity, bound by the severity of hours 
that have no elasticity. Blessedly the Lord's 
day puts an arrest on commercial energy, and 
stops the law and the anvil, the buying and 
selling of the ordinary time. The father is at 
home. This should be the children's red-letter 
day in consequence. The mother's morning 
face should wear a most cheery smile. The 
house, keyed to melody, should seem brighter 
than on other days. 

Every child in the world loves to hear 
stories, and on the Sabbath the best and dear- 
est stories should be told, the Bible stories, so 
sweet, so thrilling, so eternally fresh and so 
dramatic in their movement. Too many chil- 
dren have a very slight acquaintance with 
Bible stories now. Let the Sabbath bring a 
revived interest and a new opportunity. 

At morning prayers the Sunday-school les- 
son for the day may be very profitably read, 



1 88 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

verse about, and the father may, if he choose, 
either give a running comment of his own, or 
read from some lesson paper or commentary. 
Several hymns may be sung, and the prayer, 
having been offered by father or mother, may 
be concluded by "Our Father," repeated by 
all. 

Father and children, if in the country, may 
walk in the fields or gardens at some time on 
the Sabbath, worshiping God as they see his 
wonderful works. 

Wise mothers do not forbid little children's 
play on God's day. They must play. The 
lambs do and the squirrels and the birds. 
Why not the babies? But there may be toys 
reserved for Sundays, blocks and puzzles, not 
used on other days. The little girl need not be 
forbidden to hold her doll, but children soon 
learn that the Sunday play should be of a 
quieter, less boisterous order, than the romping 
of the week. 

All social visiting of a purely formal char- 
acter is inappropriate on the Lord's day. En- 
tertainment of friends, which implies cere- 
mony and dress and the pageantry of fashion, 
is manifestly not in the fashion of worship, nor 



SUMMER SABBATH KEEPING. 189 

yet in the line of repose or of spiritual quicken- 
ing and refreshment. There are other days 
when people may be asked to dinner and to the 
evening company. But the latch-string should 
be loose for friends who have no other day in 
which to come, for the young man away from 
home, for the young girl living among stran- 
gers, for the old lady whose life is behind her 
and who is spending her declining years in 
some asylum of charity. An extra plate and 
cup for these express Christian hospitality. 
One's own visiting when it takes the form of a 
call on the aged, or the crippled, the convales- 
cent or the bereaved, is in the true spirit of 
Sabbath-keeping. 

Into our city life by little and little, and in- 
vading bit by bit, circles where other tradi- 
tions have prevailed, has crept a habit of util- 
izing Sabbath evening leisure for social func- 
tions. This is altogether unfortunate, lower- 
ing the tone of those who are formally "At 
Home" and of those who attend receptions 
and fetes, in which worldliness of an elegant 
and attractive kind is uppermost, and from 
which religion, formal or informal, is entirely 
absent. 

Either in the cold season or the hot, the 



190 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Sunday journey should be discouraged. The 
pressure of the times hurries men on at tremen- 
dous speed. The man who has business on 
Monday in a distant city uses the Sunday train, 
or leaves business late on Saturday, arriving 
at his home on the Sabbath. People start on 
pleasure jaunts on Sabbath evening. There 
are hostelries where no arrivals and no de- 
partures take place on the Sabbath, but they 
are exceptional. As a nation, we are fast get- 
ting into a habit of traveling on the Sabbath 
when doing so suits our convenience. Might 
we not here, also, with great profit, show an 
example of strictness, never employing a Sab- 
bath train unless the life or death of some one 
dear to us, or a legitimate Christian engage- 
ment, were our reasonable excuse ? It is pleas- 
ure-seeking, not any other thing, that makes 
the enormous railway profit of Sunday, and, 
incidentally, the urgency of business, that chal- 
lenges the Fourth Commandment and dares to 
fracture it, adds to this exchequer. 

Finally, let conscience rule — conscience, 
God's voice in the soul. Whoever loves his 
native land and fears God must be concerned 
in the question of Sabbath-keeping the whole 
year round. 



Needless Calamities 



To life's very last ember, 
Life's crowning is Love." 




CHAPTER XV. 

NEEDLESS CALAMITIES. 

rEARS ago I knew intimately a young 
couple who set out on their married 
life together with favoring winds 
and all sails spread. Both were of excep- 
tional charm, and had been more than ordi- 
narily fortunate in the circumstances of their 
childhood and upbringing. The man was an 
ardent student of nature, was peculiarly en- 
dowed with talents of so high an order that 
they amounted to genius. The woman was 
rarely magnetic and rarely beautiful. They 
were sincere Christians, and when they began 
their new home the voice of prayer and praise 
linked it morning and evening to the home 
above. 

As years slipped away the friends who were 
oftenest in that house were pained to see a 



194 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

subtle but gradual change creep over it. Lit- 
tle by little the husband let go of his early 
moorings, and the wife, adoring him, accepted 
his views, and ceased to hold fast to her faith 
in God. They dropped out of their habit of 
church-going, not all at once, but inevitably, as 
in each change of local habitation it became 
less and less their desire to have a church- 
home. In worldly affairs they prospered ex- 
ceedingly, becoming wealthy and giving their 
children every educational and social advan- 
tage. Yet there was poison at the core of their 
lives. The Christian who lets go of Christ is 
a pitiable failure, let what may of earthly pros- 
perity and gladness fill his cup. At the last 
there must be a great bitterness, and this was 
the case with these apparently happy people. 
One, becoming the victim of well-nigh inces- 
sant physical pain, resorted to opium for ease, 
and presently was fast gripped in the clutches 
of a habit more despotic than any other known 
to man. The other, turning to society for re- 
lief from ennui, discovered that there was no 
cure there for a broken spirit and a disap- 
pointed heart, and to both came the pang of 
enduring the coldness and ingratitude of sons 



NEEDLESS CALAMITIES. 195 

and daughters who made money and luxury 
their ultimate ends, and despised the simple 
traditions of an honorable and God-fearing 
ancestry. 

It was an obscure disaster, never in the 
press, nor leading to any separation or scandal. 
But it blighted a home, and brought to the 
golden eventide of age two who might have 
been beautiful and blessed to the end, shorn of 
power, bereft of influence, defeated in the 
realities of existence, and fated to shipwreck 
at last. Saddest of all tragedies is the tragedy 
of those who lose faith in the Unseen, who 
cease to walk with Jesus in the way, and who 
fancy that the glare of earth's footlights is 
brighter than the clear shining of heaven's 
stars. Money is not everything. Both must 
be as dust and ashes when they are put in the 
place of God. Christ pity followers so weak 
and erring ! 

A situation not dissimilar exemplified in 
every community is illustrated by the story of 
another married pair, in which the two drifted 
insensibly even farther and farther apart, 
while both remained individually pure and 
high-minded. The husband, a physician, was 



196 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

absorbed in his profession. Science had no 
more diligent devotee. He so labored, so ex- 
hausted himself in watchings and cares, so in- 
creased in skill and learning that his name was 
known in remote places, and truest test of 
fame, people came to him from every quarter 
of the land, that he might minister to their 
needs. Nobody who sought this man as a phy- 
sician found him other than courteous, tactful 
and considerate. His compassion was bound- 
less. His tenderness was spontaneous. It was 
only in the home life that he forgot to be gra- 
cious, only to his own wife, to whom he was 
often brusque, and whose paling cheek and 
haggard air gave him no concern. When she 
one day realized that, though John loved her, 
he treated her wishes with indifference, and 
never found a moment to keep an engagement 
with her, she came to a fatal decision. 

"I will live my own life in independence. I 
will cultivate my own talents, and have my 
own circle of friends. My husband shall not 
find me wanting as his housekeeper and mis- 
tress of his home. I will pay him all honor, 
and do what I ought for our children, but I 
am entitled to a career of my own, and I will 



NEEDLESS CALAMITIES. 197 

seek it. John and I are each strong enough to 
stay together and live our separate lives." 

Here was the beginning of a gap that 
widened into a gulf, and was never bridged. 
Outwardly, the two stood in the relation of a 
loving husband and wife, and the world did 
not suspect that there was alienation in the 
home; but the home itself was a changed and 
marred spot, no longer sweet, no longer a 
refuge, no longer a haven of peace. The great 
surgeon in his later life was an unhappy and 
disappointed man, and fame's laurel was to 
him a withered and useless wreath, not worth 
the possession of a man. His wife, who had 
been a sunny-hearted, blithe girl, gained lit- 
erary distinction, and discovered that it could 
not cover an aching heart. The tragedy was 
commonplace, and of their own making. It is 
eternally true, that "he that saveth his life 
shall lose it." The husband who treats a wife 
with indifference, as husbands sometimes do, 
often does so through sheer preoccupation and 
the confidence of assured fidelity on the 
wife's part. From his very certainty that his 
love is unfaltering and that hers is constant 
and unchanging in character, a husband may 



198 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

grow superficially negligent. Women prize 
little attentions, little compliments, occasional 
small gifts and trifling courtesies quite as 
highly after marriage as before it, and their 
absence may deeply pain a very affectionate 
nature. Here enters the husband's peril. 
When the wife deliberately accepts her 
lot and becomes resigned to negligence, 
and sets out to find compensations, however 
innocent in themselves, she meets her peril. 
Though there may be common interests and 
common memories to bind them together, the 
crystalline perfection of their union is flawed, 
and they cannot have it mended without the 
fracture showing a scar. 

When young lives reach the parting of the 
ways, where the decisions that affect maturity 
must be made, it is well for their elders to re- 
frain from meddling. A man may with pro- 
priety give counsel to his son, advising him 
what profession to select, or what business to 
adopt, but he should beware of unduly urging 
him, or of arbitrarily compelling him to a 
course that may not be in the line of his ability. 
A father who, by pains and labor and sagacity? 
built up a great business, naturally hopes to see 



NEEDLESS CALAMITIES, 199 

his eldest son carry it forward, and has visions 
of what the house may reach if the boy puts 
into it the energy and vitality of his youth. 
The boy, on the other hand, may not have in- 
herited his father's tastes and talents; may 
have in his blood a roving drop,, and wish to 
become an explorer; or an inventor's genius, 
and yearn to make new combinations; or an 
artist's touch, and wish to paint or to play. In 
any of these instances, the blunder that forces 
the younger man into the place where he must 
always be a wretched misfit is likely to be an ir- 
reparable one, to have far-reaching effects that 
may be ruinous. 

We must learn in the current of home life 
to avoid reefs and shoals. It takes skilful 
management and careful handling to keep the 
little ship of home safe on the seas of life. 

Because at some point or other a mistake 
has been made, it is not worth while to go on 
heaping further mistakes on the pile. The 
blessed thing about domestic life is that love 
suffereth long and is kind, and that if there be 
honesty and candor, losses may often be trans- 
formed to gains. There are curious idiosyn- 
crasies in some families which crop out in 



200 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

foolish contentions over trifles. Money some- 
times causes disruption among kindred, a thing 
to be regretted when one remembers that ma- 
terial wealth is so mutable and family ties so 
strong. Surely the disposition of an estate 
ought not to set widely apart those whom God 
meant to be near one another in the ranks of 
life. My point is that no one should be too 
proud or too stubborn to acknowledge him- 
self or herself in the wrong if convinced that 
wrong has been done ; that no one should hesi- 
tate to receive and pardon an offender who is 
sorry for an offense. Our Lord's teaching is 
very plain here. "How often shall my brother 
sin against me, and I forgive him?" "I say 
unto thee," was Christ's answer, "not until 
seven times, but until seventy times seven." 
Forgiveness to the erring indefinitely is the law 
of the Master. In households where strife 
and bitterness have unfortunately entered, let 
love and pardon bring back peace and sweet- 
ness. Do not wait till the grave covers the one 
estranged, to hold out love's green olive 
branch, for it will then be too late. The 
golden time for reconciliation is to-day. 

Many a tragedy has its origin in a hasty 



NEEDLESS CALAMITIES. 201 

word. If people would only repress the word 
of irony, the shaft of sarcasm or the thrust of 
reproach, and wait until they are calm and self- 
restrained, before speaking in anger or re- 
proof, hearts would escape needless wounds. 
It is so easy to misunderstand our nearest and 
dearest. We do not always understand our- 
selves. Our very motives are so mixed, our 
impulses are so surprising, our acts are so un- 
foreseen, that we baffle our own explanation, 
and if this is so, surely we should not sit in 
judgment on our neighbors. At least, we 
should be reluctant to pronounce sentence too 
soon. In the intimacy of the household, where 
we are off guard, it is especially a very needful 
thing to guide well our daily course, and to re- 
frain from speech that may wound another 
child, or an aged one under the roof. 

That everywhere there may be gladness, 
that life may blossom as the world blossoms 
in the May sunshine, we must lend a hand. 
Said Dean Stanley, "Who is thy neighbor? It 
is the sufferer, wherever, whoever, whatsoever 
he be. Wherever thou hearest the cry of dis- 
tress, wherever thou seest any one brought 
across the path by the chances and changes of 



202 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

life, that is, by the Providence of God, whom 
it is in thy power to help, he is thy neighbor." 
Taking this view of life and opportunity, we 
may avert many catastrophes, and bring to 
pass many delights. 

"When you sum up the year 

With its glory of leaves, 
Its seed-time and harvest, 

Its buds and its sheaves ; — 
When you get to December, 

You sing the same tune 
That 'twas sweet to remember 

And carol, in June. 

"From the day of your youth 

To the day of white age, 
Through the book of your life 

To the very last page, 
When comes a great angel 

The 'Finis' to write, 
The same true evangel 

Is aye your delight. 

"There be those who will tell you 

Of jewels and gold, 
Of investments, a story 

Of wonder unfold. 
One dividend never 

Will fail to impart 
The self-same wealth ever, 

To dower the heart. 



NEEDLESS CALAMITIES, 203 



'Let the spring zephyrs blow, 

Or the winter winds howl. 
Let fortune smile blandly 

Or sullen fate scowl. 
From June to December, 

What sky arch above, 
To life's very last ember, 

Life's crowning is love." 



Praise Go J from JVh 



YjW 



All Blessings FIozl' 



"".Ihem we axe candid with ourselves in 

: -"- :.r_i: i... : _r '..--- r..i-t ;.e-tr. : .t-.vf t-i -;:.:. : : r. 
tinnal acts of favor undeserved, sent lis by ©tit 
1 ovine F2.1r.rr 




CHAPTER XVI. 

PRAISE GOD FROM 

WHOM ALL BLESSINGS 

FLOW. 

" jT) RAISE ye the Lord. Oh, give 
jf thanks unto the Lord, for he 
is good, for his mercy endureth 
forever." 

The swiftly revolving year reaches one 
period when we are reminded by those in high 
places of the duty to render thanksgiving. 
Looking up the subject in the Bible, we are 
impressed with the ecstasy of gratitude which 
fills the sacred writers with such rapture of 
delight that it continually breaks out in accla- 
mations of exulting melody. Praise is the 
burden of many a noble psalm. Praise is the 
love song of the prophets. Praise is the dom- 
inant note of the apostles. The Book is a 
grand litany of triumphant praise. 



208 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

Then we turn to Nature and we realize that 
all God's works, the light, the darkness, the 
sun, the stars, the dew, the frost, the storm, 
the rejoicing river, the unresting sea, the lofty 
mountain, the waving harvest, everything com- 
bines to praise the Lord. 

"The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky, 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
Their great Original proclaim. 

"The unwearied sun, from day to day, 
Does his Creator's power display, 
And publishes to every land 
The work of an Almighty Hand. 

"Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 
And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birth ; 

"While all the stars that round her burn, 
And all the planets in their turn, 
Confirm the tidings as they roll, 
And spread the truth from pole to pole. 

"What though in solemn silence all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball? 
What though no real voice nor sound 
Amid their radiant orbs be found? 



PRAISE GOD. 209 

"In reason's ear they all rejoice, 
And utter forth a glorious voice; 
For ever singing, as they shine, 
'The Hand that made us is divine.' " 

Now, let us turn to David's psalms and 
again lose materialism, sordidness, and com- 
mercialism, in a sense of the majesty of crea- 
tion. 

What are some of the features in our lives, 
that lead us, at this good time, to give God 
thanks ? 

One is, that we know him as our Father. 
Into every conception of fatherhood, person- 
ality enters and abides. Not as a dim, vague, 
distant and all-powerful ruler of the universe, 
do we approach our God. No, we say in 
childlike confidence, "Our Father which art in 
heaven!" — the prayer which our Elder 
Brother taught us. "We have erred and 
strayed like lost sheep, we have followed too 
much the devices and desires of our own 
hearts," but God is our Father! He knoweth 
our infirmities, he remembereth that we are 
dust. Like as a father pitieth his children, so 
the Lord pitieth them that fear him. 

A father here on the earth stands between 



210 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

his children and their own inexperience, wil- 
fulness and wickedness. A father, here on 
the earth, pardons and restores to favor the 
child who, having transgressed, is penitent 
and seeks forgiveness. Shall our Father in 
heaven do less? 

The realization of our Divine Father as a 
person whom we approach continually with- 
out fear and in utter trust is our greatest 
reason for thankfulness. Unhappy indeed is 
that lonely lost child who has gotten away 
from this blessed reality. 

Another precious reason for thankfulness is 
that we may be intimate with Jesus Christ. 
When he was here on this earth, the 
disciples were intimate with him. They 
walked with him, heard him speak, 
talked freely with him, saw his mira- 
cles and broke bread with him. Some 
were more intimate than others. At times he 
selected two or three to go with him into the 
deeper mysteries, to share the heavier pangs. 
One lay on Jesus' breast — think of that daring 
act of love, which let John thus lean on the 
Master, pillowing his head above that beating 
heart of Christ! 



PRAISE GOD. 211 

We may have such intimacy now. The 
Comforter has come, and, leading us into the 
realms unknown of men, he enables us to find 
our Master in every vicissitude, to seek him in 
every emergency. Some care more for Jesus 
than others do. They have more of his light 
in their faces. We jostle one another on the 
high road, we meet in crowds and apart, we 
are never mistaken when we see in any human 
countenance the peculiar radiance which 
speaks of an indwelling Christ. Friends, if 
you and I are intimate with Jesus Christ, our 
cup of thankfulness this year may well over- 
flow. 

Naturally when we begin to count our bless- 
ings, the home dear ones come first. I wonder 
if we are grateful as we ought to be for the 
great circle of these loved ones whom we have 
not yet met, great grandparents and remote 
kindred who have transmitted to us the quali- 
ties that make us what we are, but concerning 
whom we have as little thought as if they had 
never existed. You know, do you not, that 
practically very few people realize in daily life 
that they ever had ancestors of four, five, six 
generations ago ? But we would not be what 



212 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

we are, any of us, if they had not lived and 
wrought manfully. So, if they have be- 
queathed to us vigorous health, hopefulness, 
courage, tenacity, ardor in pursuit, strength in 
possession, a stainless name, lofty ideals, clean 
traditions, we may well thank God for them, 
our home dear ones, whom we shall meet and 
love by and by. 

For the precious ones in the family circle, 
fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sweet- 
hearts, friends, and the great beautiful throng 
of the children who brighten every day and 
sweeten every cup and ease every hardship, we 
must evermore be thankful. If we are thank- 
ful we shall be just, gentle, considerate and 
self-denying. Every noble virtue flourishes in 
the soil of thankfulness. 

Many a time we ought to praise God and 
we fail to do so, just because nothing happens. 
It is our impulse to say "Thank God!" when 
we escape accident and are aware of it; when 
other homes are burned to the ground and the 
fire leaps over ours; when our children come 
through fevers to convalescence. Ah, should 
we not be deeply grateful night after night, 
when the latch key turns and the man of the 



PRAISE GOD. 213 

house comes home safe, when trains do not 
run off tracks, when nobody is ill, when noth- 
ing out of the blessed ordinary course of the 
daily routine occurs to startle or make us 
afraid? 

Prominent among causes for daily praise is 
the fact that our lot is cast in a Christian land. 
The land is not altogether what we wish. On 
this side and that, vice uprears its head, and 
Satan spreads his snares. The presence of the 
saloon and the menace of a violated Lord's 
day detract from the land's well-being. Not- 
withstanding all, this is a land that on the 
whole is pledged for righteousness. God-fear- 
ing people dwell here. Church spires dot every 
valley, gleam from many a hill. Home mis- 
sions are striving to redeem the communities 
that are farthest from the influences that bless 
and save. On the frontier, in the mining 
camp, among the red men, the white banner of 
the cross is borne high by heroic and devoted 
men. Ask any foreign missionary, and he will 
tell you that in lands where idolatry prevails 
the very air is polluted, that the depression of 
wickedness, cruelty and malignant evil is as a 
dead weight upon the heart, a blight on every 



2i 4 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

prospect. Thank God we dwell in a Christian 
land. 

Whenever the temptation to fret against 
the daily allotment of duty and task surges in 
upon you or me, is it not a healthful thing to 
count up our mercies? They exceed our 
trials. Not one of us but has a hundred occa- 
sions for comforting recognition of God's 
goodness, for a single one of distress under 
some grievous discipline. When we are can- 
did with ourselves we must own that all our 
lives have been blessed with continual acts of 
favor undeserved, sent us by our loving 
Father. 

Has your memory no record of days that 
brought sudden surprises of blessing? Just as 
now and then in traveling we turn a corner, 
and lo! a glimpse of unspeakable beauty 
makes us catch our breath in delight, so there 
flash upon us on life's road great and over- 
whelming beams of light. And all that was 
clouded is forgotten in the fulness of the 
glory. Mounts of transfiguration are given 
to many disciples, even yet, and they never 
climb them except in the company of Jesus. 
Therefore, it is well to be constantly close to 



PRAISE GOD, 215 

him, and to live in that state of communion 
where he can grant special unfoldings of 
vision, to show us heaven as near at hand. 
For these surprises of blessing, how our souls 
lift up their joyful songs. 

We sometimes with profit read an old-time 
anthem. Let us quote — 

"If any one would tell you the shortest, 
surest way to all happiness and all perfection, 
he must tell you to make a rule to yourself to 
thank and praise God for everything that hap- 
pens to you. For it is certain that whatever 
seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank 
and praise God for it, you turn it into a bless- 
ing. Could you, therefore, work miracles, 
you could not do more for yourself than by 
this thankful spirit, for it heals with a word- 
speaking, and turns all that it touches into 
happiness." 

Seldom are we able, in the first anguish of 
bereavement, to rejoice that our kindred and 
our friends have finished their warfare and 
reached the shores of peace. We want them 
here where we can see them, talk to them, feel 
the cheer of their companionship. Yet 
mothers have lived long enough to understand 



216 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

that it was better for their children to have 
been taken in the dew of the morning, and 
children have thanked God, later on, for 
parents removed before a wind of calamity- 
smote the four corners of the house. In the 
orderly sequence of incident and event, most 
of us learn that the plan of God for our lives 
was a much better plan than any we could 
have made for ourselves. The outcome of 
the most afflicting occurrences is blessed to the 
believing heart, in the end. Therefore, there 
is true piety in being thankful, let whatever 
may befall us. 

The charm of our American Thanksgiving 
Day lies in its character of a family festival. 
Sons and daughters go home for Thanksgiv- 
ing. Scattered clans are brought together. 
Large families, rarely able to surround one 
table, meet in a central home, and the family 
bond is strengthened. In old homesteads, 
where parents are left with remnants of a once 
merry group, a maiden daughter, a bachelor 
son, a grandchild or two, through the twelve- 
month, there is great gladness at Thanksgiv- 
ing for every train and boat and stage and 
carry-all that drops passengers at wayside sta- 



PRAISE GOD. 217 

tions will help to bring the children home for 
a day of mirth and reunion. "Praise God 
from whom all blessings flow." Let every- 
thing that hath breath praise him, and all 
nature join in the hallelujah chorus. 



Shut-In Friends 



" Pray for and with the sick, but do not forget 
that their want and pain are prayers that are 
never unheard at the throne of divine pity." 




CHAPTER XVII. 

SHUT-IN FRIENDS. 

/AM writing on a winter's day, and this is 
to be a winter's tale. The white gar- 
ments of the newly fallen snow are 
lying warm and soft over the fields where next 
year's bread is growing; the wind is very still, 
as if hushed by a mother's voice, the brooding 
skies are gray. Every bush and tree and fence 
and roof so far as I can see has its burden of 
Nature's ermine, and the day is tranquil and 
beautiful, though cold. 

In a house that I note from my window, 
one of God's dearest saints is drifting out, 
it would seem, with the hours of this day; 
there is neither "sound nor foam," but perfect 
peace in that chamber which, for one who has 
long suffered, will soon be indeed a chamber 
of peace, and luminous with heaven. What 



222 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

will it be to one long shut-in, to enter the land 
where the inhabitants shall never say, "I am 
sick"? 

There are always those who, by reason of 
age or infirmity, are housed in the winter, who 
must avoid its rigors by remaining in a bland 
and pleasantly heated atmosphere, and who 
wait for spring with the wistful longing of 
prisoners anticipating release from their 
bonds. They are temporarily shut-in, and 
have the advantage of knowing that when the 
time of the singing of birds returns, they too 
will preen their feathers, and sit in the sun- 
shine and walk forth into a blossom-fragrant 
world. The shut-in friends who are perma- 
nently disabled, chained to a couch or a chair, 
held there by iron clutches of pain, or 
weighted by increasing weakness, are objects 
of deeper sympathy from us than the others. 

Even at the worst, the shut-in sufferer may 
dare to hope for alleviation or improvement, 
if not for cure. Pain wears itself out, and is 
succeeded by ease, or a remedy is discovered, 
or one grows so accustomed to its daily grind 
that the torture is lessened. Among the most 
cheerful, the most heroic, the most blithe- 



SHUT-IN FRIENDS. 223 

hearted women I have ever known, I think of 
two, whose portion for years was never-ceas- 
ing pain, and confinement to their homes. 

In Elizabeth's room, the gayety of the 
house centered, and neither husband nor child 
crossed her door-sill without receiving a radi- 
ant smile. She grew so thin that the rare face 
was but a transparency for the rare soul; her 
dark eyes glowed in her wasted countenance 
like great stars; her whole being became 
ethereal before her fetters were broken, but 
there was no lowering of her flag, no diminu- 
tion of her courage. She was able through 
God's grace to "drink her cup of woe, tri- 
umphant over pain," and that shut-in life was 
a benediction. 

Agnes was younger, a mere girl, blue-eyed, 
fair-haired, exquisite. She gave you the image 
of "a lily among thorns." A mysterious 
malady sapped her vitality, laid her low, kept 
her long in anguish. At last snapped the sil- 
ver chord. About her, too, there was a win- 
some sweetness, there was an utter absence of 
fretful complaint and repining. There was 
an exquisite self-abnegation. 

Such examples prove that there is ameliora- 



224 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

tion in the most distressing affliction that 
comes through physical feebleness or disease. 
When the three children walked in Nebuchad- 
nezzar's fiery furnace, seven times heated, one 
was seen to walk through the flames with 
them, and his form was like the Son of God. 

Dr. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, once wrote 
of a beloved shut-in sufferer in these words : 

"I must conclude with a more delightful 
subject, my most dear and blessed sister. I 
never saw a more perfect instance of the spirit 
of power and of love and of a sound mind; in- 
tense love, almost to the annihilation of sel- 
fishness, — a daily martyrdom for twenty 
years, during which she adhered to her early 
formed resolution of never talking about her- 
self; thoughtful about the very pins and rib- 
bons of my wife's dress, about the making of a 
doll's cap for a child; but of herself save only 
as regarded her ripening in all goodness, 
wholly thoughtless; enjoying everything love- 
ly, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether 
in God's works or man's, with the keenest 
relish; inheriting the earth to the very fulness 
of the promise, though never leaving her crib 
nor changing her posture; and preserved 



SHUT-IN FRIENDS. 225 

through the very valley of the shadow of 
death from all fear or impatience, or from 
every cloud of impaired reason, which might 
mar the beauty of Christ's glorious work." 

"The folded hands seem idle. 

If folded at his word, 
'Tis a holy service, trust me, 
In obedience to the Lord." 

The rule made for herself by this sister, 
who left with her famous brother so deep and 
enduring an impression of sanctity and pa- 
tience, is a good one for every invalid. As- 
sailed by the temptation to describe one's ail- 
ments, unless the auditor be a physician or a 
nurse, and therefore obliged to listen, because 
privileged to help, one should firmly close 
one's lips. Because we are interesting to our- 
selves, because we half-unconsciously feel that 
our pangs are a sort of patent of distinction, 
we are apt to discourse too freely about our 
headaches, our neuralgia, our nervous ex- 
haustion. Nothing is less wholesome for 
those who are ill, and nothing more weari- 
some to those who are well, than recitals of 
special varieties of illness, and enumerations 



226 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

of the treatments that have been evoked for 
relief. 

Among my readers there may be somebody 
who notices that people do not speak so clearly 
as they used to, that tones are muffled, that she 
does not catch every delicate shade in a con- 
versation. In short, deafness is creeping on 
stealthily, it may be certainly. Well, what of 
it? Proper treatment may cure or relieve it; 
there are audiphones which help; in peculiar 
conditions of the air, the deafest person hears 
more than in other atmospheric environment. 
If one is really growing irreparably deaf, she 
may as well reflect that she will be saved from 
hearing a good many trivial and some disa- 
greeable things; and, thank God! memory 
never loses the sweetness of the music it has 
heard, the entrancing joy of the harmonies 
that have filled it in the past. 

Equally, should the stealthy advance of the 
foe be a threat to the precious sight of one's 
eyes, the gift of all others inestimable, why 
yield to despair, why involve those you love 
in the tendency to morbid depression which 
overclouds the soul as the thought of darkened 
years appalls it? You may never, my friend, 



SHUT-IN FRIENDS. 227 

know those darkened years. None of us has a 
lease of this mortal life signed and delivered 
in her hand. The thing you fear may be ar- 
rested, averted; you may have sight enough 
for your needs to the latest hour you stay on 
earth. If not, there are strong and ready 
hands everywhere to aid you, bright eyes to 
look for you, and read to you, and good times 
waiting all round your path. Do not bemoan 
yourself over any present disturbance, or over 
any future ill wind of destiny. You are not 
among the shadows yet. Never dwell among 
them. Insist, with every power of your mind, 
in staying in the open, so far as thought and 
feeling are concerned. You may do this, 
though your body be pent up within the con- 
fines of four narrow walls. 

Perhaps the peril that most constantly men- 
aces the invalid is self-absorption. The well 
have a thousand outside interests. A man 
goes to business, works hard all day, comes 
home at night, tired, but not dull. He has 
seen people, has rubbed against them. The 
friction of human intercourse has kept his 
mental weapons smooth and bright. To the 
person, man or woman, who spends, day in 



228 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

and day out, his or her life in a darkened 
room, there are few affairs that lift the mind 
from its own mournful contemplations. A 
girl or a woman in a normal state of health 
cares how she looks, and her dress is properly 
a matter of importance in her thought. Why 
should one care what she wears, when she lies 
in bed, when her only change of raiment is 
from night-robe to dressing-sacque ? 

So far as practicable, I counsel each shut-in 
woman to strive against carelessness about her 
toilette. The invalid should be dainty, and, 
if she can manage it, fastidious. On spotless 
neatness about her bed and room she should 
insist. She should teach herself to care about 
the life of the household, yes, and about the 
whirling, rushing life of the great world, the 
roar of which comes so faintly to her, as she 
tarries in her chamber, in sanctuary. 

If you who are well and strong wish to 
help your invalid friends, do so by the exer- 
cise of stout common sense. Should you send 
them books, they need not be exclusively devo- 
tional or directly religious in character. Good 
books we all require, but our reading is varied 
in health, and it ought to be in illness. The 



SHUT-IN FRIENDS. 229 

person who can bear to hear reading may be 
much more helped by a bright entertaining 
story than by a classic like Baxter's "Saint's 
Rest," or Owen's "Four-fold State." Do not 
assume that illness must be limited to an intel- 
lectual strain pitched wholly in a minor key. 
Bring some one to the house who can play the 
violin, or sing, and bring, too, the stimulant of 
your own faith and courage and gladness. 
Pray for and with the sick, but do not forget 
that their want and pain are prayers that are 
never unheard at the throne of divine pity. 

Blessings on those neighborly souls who 
have leisure in the midst of full lives to think 
of those who are laid aside. A letter carries 
more comfort than you dream to the invalid 
who was not expecting it. When poverty 
complicates the case, and the shut-in friend is 
forced to do without the little luxuries that 
make easier a hard lot, love may tactfully sup- 
ply some of the lack. A gentle word of com- 
passion goes far, if it be sincere. I have 
known invalids crushed by the well-meant but 
brusque assurances of visitors that they were 
surprised to see them looking so fine and 
strong, absolutely as if there were nothing at 



230 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

all wrong. In gifts, in attentions, in speech, 
the guest in the sick-room must contrive not to 
be burdensome, nor inopportune, nor untrue. 
Nowhere is discretion at a greater premium 
than here. Nowhere is there more need of 
that charity which is long-suffering, which has 
caught its secret from Christ's own heart of 
love. 

After all, the softest pillow on which the 
weary head can rest is acceptance of the 
Father's will, as personal, as individual, as 
kind and gracious, and sure to be for the best. 
Rest, dear sufferer, on the "sweet will of 
God." It never yet made one mistake. 



At Christmas Time 



" Somehow, the holly says ' Merry Christmas ' 
in accents more tuneful than speech. It is itself 
a song without words." 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

AT CHRISTMAS TIME. 

y/LL the year round the dear Christmas 
- /^j[ holly is biding its time in the lone- 
some wood. When the snowdrops 
come and the jonquils blow, when the roses 
bloom and the lilies shine, when the salvia 
strings its jewels and the asters cloud the hills 
with purple and amethyst, we have no need 
of holly. But the winter winds blow, the 
great rivers are ice-locked, the fields are deep 
in snowy silence, and over the vast white 
world the golden bells of the Christmas tide 
are ringing loud and clear. How lofty is their 
message; how sweet their choral, as they re- 
mind us of that old night in Bethlehem when 
the angels brought heaven's greeting to earth. 
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good-will toward men," for lo! in a 



234 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

mother's arms lies a little child, and Jesus the 
Saviour is born. 

When we keep the Christmas feast we want 
the Christmas holly. Now is the time for 
home festivals, for church reunions, for good 
times in the newsboys' lodging house, in the 
orphan asylum, among the very, very poor, 
and in the king's palace, too. For there is this 
about the holly, with the bright green prickly 
leaf and the bright red gleaming berry, that 
while it grew in the lonesome wood, it became 
strong and sturdy, and steadfast and generous, 
so that it might suit all classes and conditions 
of men. A spray of it is prettier than dia- 
monds in the bodice of the princess, and it is a 
beautiful decoration on the frieze coat of the 
day laborer. Stuck in a broken pitcher on the 
shelf in a mountain cabin, it is as much at 
home as in a crystal vase in a city mansion. 
The Christmas holly is a great commoner, so 
great that its aristocracy is never challenged. 
Bind it with the evergreen garland and hang 
it over the organ pipes ; it will tremble in har- 
mony with the music. Carry it to the sick 
room and set it on the little stand where 
fevered fingers may caress it. To the invalid 



AT CHRISTMAS TIME. 235 

it will speak of health and cheer and fragrance 
undying. Send it to the counting-house. A 
branch of it on the merchant's desk shall dis- 
prove his boastful assertion that sentiment 
and business are invariably divorced. Tie it 
on the Christmas basket that carries its sur- 
prise of food and raiment to the destitute, 
where they crowd about a naked hearth. Slip 
it into the Christmas box that adds one more 
joy to the joys uncounted that bless the path- 
way of the happy bride. 

Somehow, the holly says "Merry Christ- 
mas" in accents more tuneful than speech. It 
is itself a song without words. We loved it 
when we were children, and if we have lived 
until gray hairs, we love it still. 

In the beautiful twilight of the curtained 
parlor, with the rose-red embers and the sil- 
ver-white ash symbolizing the waning of the 
year, we are apt to think of Christmas-past 
as well as of Christmas-present. Do you re- 
member how interminable the space used to 
be between one Christmas and another? 
Twelve months to the girl or the boy who once 
stood for you and answered to your name 
seemed a wide section of eternity. The mind 



236 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

refused to grasp the distance. And, oh ! what 
ecstasy in the weeks, busy, eager, zestful, 
crammed with strange mysteries, that led up 
through December's bleakness to the day of 
days. So much to do, so much to wait for; so 
much to give; so much to feel! And then — 

"The night before Christmas, when all through the 
house 
Not a creature was stirring, a rat or a mouse." 

Then the stockings were hung in the chim- 
ney corner, and you went to bed wide-awake 
and intended to stay so, and sleep stole on you 
like an army out of an ambuscade. You have 
no such nights now, but your children have. 
The charm of the Christmas-tide is perennial. 
You are blithe with the children, because in 
every Christmas-present a Christmas-past sur- 
vives. Be as sober-footed as care itself the 
rest of the year, at Christmas you are a child 
again. God pity you if this possibility has 
been lost ! if you have not the faith in him, the 
love for your fellows which makes you child- 
like in acceptance of his blessedness at the 
Christmas season. Not to know something of 
the child's simplicity, of the child's abandon, 
of the child's humility and gratitude, for 



A T CHRIS TMAS TIME. 237 

favors received is to be out of the procession, 
to sit beggared and bankrupt by the wayside, 
while the ranks pass by with drums beating 
and colors flying. 

We cannot but miss some loved faces in the 
Christmas groups, for there are in most 
homes vacant chairs. As Dr. Chadwick has 
said: 

"It singeth low in every heart, 

We hear it each and all — 
A song of those who answer not, 

However we may call. 
They throng the silence of the breast; 

We see them as of yore — 
The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, 

Who walk with us no more." 

But there is no jar in our Christmas jubila- 
tion because of the absent who have gone 
home. They are with God, with that God 
who so loved the world that he sent his only 
Son to redeem it. God is with us. His Child 
of Heaven tabernacled in our clay. God is 
with them, and they behold the face of the 
risen Saviour in the land where all is love. I 
wonder if there be not a richer note in the 
chorals there on Christmas morning, caught 



238 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

from our chorals here, which rise from thou- 
sands and tens of thousands to praise the One 
whose hands and feet bear the marks of the 
nails. Nay, our absent do not darken our 
Christmas joy. They make it only the more 
radiant. 

When we abide in the past, we show by that 
token that we have grown old. To look back 
upon it with tender yearning is not to stay in 
it, not to rest there. Being all young together, 
we may find it a delight to dwell in Christmas- 
present. 

The woods where the holly grew tough and 
staunch and thrifty are quiet, but out of their 
peace they are sending something most 
precious to the crowded streets and the busy 
towns and the rushing, laughing, wistful, ve- 
hement, overflowing life of the people in ham- 
let and city at Christmas-tide. Ebb days are 
over. Love and pleasure are now at flood. 
The shops glitter with the spoils of commerce 
— laces like hoar-frost for delicacy and like 
cobwebs for fineness ; pictures that hold nature 
enchanted in their spells, gems that mirror 
wave and sky in their rainbow depths, silks 
which shimmer in a luster that rivals sunshine 






AT CHRISTMAS TIME. 239 

on the sea, books of ruch beauty and variety 
as are beyond words to describe are among the 
treasures that tempt the plethoric purse. The 
pocketbook that bulges with wealth may easily 
collapse in the effort to choose among so many 
splendors. The lean purse, if judgment and 
painstaking control it, may also buy braveries 
for its loved ones in this modern Vanity Fair 
which, less unfriendly than Bunyan's and 
equally of surpassing pomp, attracts us all. 

A good book contains in its essence so much 
that is imperishable that it is a charming 
Christmas gift to offer one's friend. Selected 
with a view to the pleasure it may convey and 
to the endurance of that pleasure, tied in white 
paper with a ribbon and a rose and a bit of 
holly, it is an unrivalled Christmas messenger. 

But if one have to deny one's self the dear 
joy of giving at Christmas-tide because one 
has little money to spend, one need not 
despair. Few are so poor that they may not 
walk through the Christmas markets and pur- 
chase a bunch of evergreen, few cannot com- 
pass a sheet of paper and a postage stamp. A 
postal card may carry a sweet phrase, a per- 
sonal message, around the globe. With what 



2 4 o THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

wealth of kind remembrance a telegram may 
be freighted, and how comforting it is just to 
be assured that one is not forgotten, just to 
know that one is held close to some heart, and 
prayed for at night and morning. In the 
brightness of our Christmas-present let us 
leave out none for whom we ought to pray. 

"God has given me a great love for my 
own," said a friend lately. If God has com- 
mitted to you or to me a talent for loving, a 
genius for making others happy, a rare unsel- 
fishness, let us ask him to make us still richer, 
to help us so to broaden out and enlarge the 
sphere of our affection, that it may include the 
whole world. 

Then, when Christmas comes, and the bit 
of holly lies beside the plate, there will be a 
thought of the missionary far from home, of 
the little brown and yellow and black children 
in Africa, China and India whose Christmas 
trees are laden with gifts; of our soldiers in 
the Far East; of the miners in the fastnesses 
of the rock; of our sailors on the stormy 
ocean. If Christmas-past has brought us its 
best and most cheery lesson, we have not 
waited until the dawn of Christmas-present to 






A T CHRIS TMAS TIME. 241 

turn these thoughts into sweet realities. Camp 
and tent, and ship and bungalow, and mission 
school are even now rejoicing because Chris- 
tian people, adoring Christ, have made their 
Christmas glad. 

In the hush that falls upon our hearts as 
Christmas leaves us, we review the year. 
Whatever it has brought us, of bliss or of 
dele, of denial or of gift, of pain or of satis- 
faction, it has been to every one of us a year 
of the right hand of the Most High. Perhaps 
we cannot now see why the Father appoints us 
what seems a severe discipline; doubtless we 
never shall know here, but by faith we may 
take what God sends and have neither fear nor 
protest, not alone at the sweet anniversary sea- 
sons, but in the common days and the common 
events and experiences, for there our Father 
has revealed his great goodness to us the un- 
worthy, yet beloved children of his care. No 
incident of our pilgrimage but is haloed with a 
promise of his blessing, no hour that is not 
glorified because he is ours and we are his. 

The few days that follow Christmas are 
very busy. Most of us desire to finish up the 
year's work and be ready for the new year, 






242 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

with debts paid, plans carried to completion, 
decks, so to speak, cleared for action. We are 
not able to realize our ideals fully, but at least 
we may approximate the best that is in our 
minds. The spell of merry Christmas linger- 
ing shall make us gentler, more considerate, 
more courageous, and more solicitous to make 
our little world happy. With the big world 
outside, you and I have little to do, but we 
may make very serene and sweet the small 
place where our home stands ; very blessed the 
group of loved ones who are our nearest of 
kin, very peaceful the aged who depend on our 
care, and very mirthful the little children 
whom we love. 

Thus we muse over our Christmas holly. 
Musing and dreaming, the air is everywhere 
full of music. What happiness our dear Lord 
brought with him to the earth. The false re- 
ligions are gloomy. There are no rites that 
sanctify and uplift the home in any heathen 
creed. Christ glorifies the simplest house- 
hold. Every little child who kneels and says, 
"Now I lay me down to sleep," is the richer 
for the Child who brought salvation to a lost 
world. 



AT CHRISTMAS TIME. 243 

A Merry Christmas to you, dear invisible, 
unknown reader, whose warm hand-clasp I 
feel across the December snow. Merry 
Christmas to grandfathers and grandmothers, 
to big brothers and elder sisters, to husbands 
and wives, to the children around the hearth. 
May you find in your stockings just what you 
want. May the fun of Christmas overflow. 
And make this good wish mine as my bit of 
Christmas holly. 



A Narrow Neck of Land 



" Every year adds one to our birthdays, and it 
adds also to that largess of love, which is our 
treasure never to be taken away." 




CHAPTER XIX. 

A NARROW NECK OF 
LAND. 

T TOW fast the years fly! One never 

jfjf finds them slow-paced after child- 
hood; they have wings, not feet. 
Our days depart like dreams; our yesterdays 
are a long procession, our to-morrows stretch 
away into the infinite. "Lo ! on a narrow neck 
of land, 'Twixt two unbounded seas we 
stand." 

It is inevitable, if we are inclined to be the 
least thoughtful, that we should review some 
things at the beginning of a new year. In a 
sense we own nothing except the present mo- 
ment. In another sense, equally true, we own 
every moment we have ever had. Our school- 
days, our books, our friends, our joys and sor- 
rows, our hopes and disappointments, our bat- 
tles and defeats, our gains and our losses, are 



248 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

all part of our property, of our personal pos- 
sessions which none can take away from us. 
The manner of man or woman that we are is 
colored by the influences that have affected 
and the experiences that have entered into our 
whole lives. The past is in our blood. Our 
brains are inscribed with the thoughts, feelings, 
and intentions, the purposes, fulfilments and 
endeavors of all our years. In some upflashing 
of memory, prompted by a sound, a song, a 
flitting glimpse of color, or by a sudden peril, 
we sometimes see our whole past, from child- 
hood on, moving before us like a swiftly roll- 
ing panorama. Intangible, but real, the past 
is of us and we are of it, and yet this need not 
daunt us nor distress us, for it is in the power 
of the present to vanquish and to remedy the 
foes and the ills of the past. 

Among the pleasures of a new year is a re- 
view of the way by which the old year has led 
us. Always it is to be marked with a white 
stone, for the unexpected blessings that it 
brought. Surprises in new opportunities, in 
new friendships, in books which opened new 
vistas in thought, in many a help heavenward, 
these came to us with the days. Far wiser it is 



A NARROW NECK OF LAND. 249 

to walk on the bright side of the old year than 
to depress our hearts by recounting its mis- 
takes, defeats and sorrows. The disposition 
to grieve too profoundly over losses is mor- 
bid, and seriously handicaps one for the race 
that is before him. I think there should be a 
very special rejoicing in the new year's morn- 
ing over the little ones who were born in the 
course of its predecessor. What possibilities 
are folded in those tiny rose-leaf hands ! What 
incentives they are to effort! Each wee dar- 
ling of the household is a motive for the 
nobler living of its parents, for the mother's 
fuller consecration, for the father's greater 
self-control, for more tenderness and sweet- 
ness on the part of brothers and sisters. 

Forecasting the months to come, young 
people make many good resolutions. Older 
people are slower to resolve, because they have 
learned that too often dependence is on resolu- 
tion, and not on God, and therefore resolution 
proves a crutch of bending straw. A happy 
way for the new year will be to take each day 
as a gift from the Lord, and, looking little 
farther than the sunset, fill its golden mo- 
ments with loving toil for the Master and for 



250 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

his dear ones. The tendency to take long, 
anxious looks ahead is innate in some of us, 
but it terminates in waste, and is attended by 
worry, two most destructive forces. When 
we consider that the present if well spent is of 
necessity providing for the future, we under- 
stand that there is no occasion for undue solici- 
tude, for that sort of fretting care against 
which the Master warned us. To-day's duty 
well performed is the foundation-stone for to- 
morrow's achievement. 

We may well take the tonic of this thought 
to our hearts when we are set face to face with 
certain changing conditions that, in the course 
of the years, affect family life. When illness 
invades the home or a lingering malady fas- 
tens its grasp upon a sufferer, the others, who 
are well, are conscious of carrying on a dual 
life. They go forth to the shop or the mill, 
the school or the office, and engage in business 
with the absorption it demands, or they do the 
daily housework, cooking, sweeping, sewing, 
or whatever it may be, with exactness and 
nicety. Yet all the while, a part of them is in 
the invalid's chamber, beside her couch, listen- 
ing for the footsteps of the doctor, and await- 



A NARROW NECK OF LAND. 251 

ing his verdict. That ebbing life is so precious. 
The thought of a vacant chair is so insup- 
portable. To fancy the house without the 
mother, or the sister, or the father, is well- 
nigh impossible, yet over and over, before- 
hand, the mind goes on, disturbed and over- 
whelmed. 

Dear friends, who sit in the shadow cast by 
the Angel at the door, whose errand is to bring 
release unto them that are bound, shake off 
your anxiety. Your sorrow you may not lose, 
but be not anxious. Nothing can happen to 
any of our loved ones, unless the Lord send it. 
Nothing will happen until his day dawns, 
when the darkness of earth shall be changed 
for the glory of heaven. 

To some of those who are on the wester- 
ing slope it is a great trouble that they are 
manifestly growing old. "I hate it," said a 
woman, looking keenly in her glass and dis- 
cerning the lines in her face, the hollowing of 
her cheeks, the whitening of her hair. "I 
never will grow old!" said another, with an 
evident snatching at a gayety of manner, 
charming when natural, but repellent when 
assumed. And her emphatic protest merely 



252 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

accentuated the fact that youth had waned 
and age had arrived. 

May there not be a growing old which is 
most beautiful, because in the order of God's 
appointment the bud becomes the flower, the 
green ear the ripe? Age has a grace of its 
own when it is accepted, not resented. Its 
dignity, its equanimity, its experience, may not 
these be as winning as the qualities which be- 
long to an earlier period? Age has great 
store of wealth, in sunny memories, in troops 
of kindred, in a great company of friends. 
Every year adds one to our birthdays, and it 
adds also to that largess of love, which is our 
treasure never to be taken away. 

Instead of bewailing the passing years, the 
old should be chary of losing any that remain. 
Age should beware of rusty tools and of 
empty hands. To ignore the flight of time 
and keep straight on with our work, is to erect 
the best barrier against time's attacks. u Do 
thy work," whether old or young. "Improve 
the shining hour." Leave all the rest to 
God. 

In the new year that is now poised on the 
threshold, one who is thrifty may perceive an 



A NARROW NECK OF LAND. 253 

opportunity for carrying out some purpose 
hitherto unattainable. "My husband and I 
are going away for a long holiday," said a 
lady. "It is the first time in forty years that 
we have been free to leave home. But our 
last daughter is married and we are at liberty 
to saunter around lands of which we have 
read, to poke into tiny out-of-the-way places 
where few tourists go, and to have an Indian 
summer pilgrimage all by ourselves." The 
idea was a good one. Not all are so fortu- 
nate as to have the means and the leisure to 
carry out so broad a plan, but there are few 
who could not manage to get some definite bit 
of unwonted pleasure or recreation into some 
month of the coming twelve, if they would 
only think it worth while to try. 

In this glad new year might we not be more 
careful about the little things that foot up to 
so large a total on the balance sheet at last? 
How often are we weary and irritable, and 
say less or more than we mean, less of gen- 
erous whole-hearted praise, more of crabbed 
and inconsiderate blame. The sharp words 
that ought never to be spoken, the sharp tem- 
per behind the knife-like words are among 



254 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

those things which we should most regret, and 
for help against which we should oftenest 
pray. And our deeds that are wrong, our lit- 
tle acts of churlishness or stupidity, our blind- 
ness and dumbness and deafness in the house- 
hold, in society, our failures to make the at- 
mosphere about us purer and sweeter, how 
they rise against us in judgment. We may as 
well, God granting us grace, endeavor hon- 
estly and faithfully to be right and do right in 
little things for another year. 

A good deal of wretchedness is wrought in 
this world through perversity. Two or three 
persons may be honorable and straightfor- 
ward, yet through having a different education 
or a different point of view, carelessly jar upon 
and antagonize one another. Otherwise happy 
domestic circles are often almost hopelessly 
disintegrated in feeling, because of this. They 
wholly miss the family blessedness that ought 
to be the family birthright. Incompatibility 
of temperament puts a sack-cloth robe on the 
joy of life. But if it exist and if it be recog- 
nized, it need not be insurmountable. Chris- 
tian patience and long suffering can do much 
toward adjustment, and there is to those who 



A NARROW NECK OF LAND. 255 

bear and forbear a very special message from 
the King, "To him that overcometh, will I 
give to eat of the hidden manna." 

Has there been family worship in your 
home in the years past? The practice once 
universal in Christian homes of having family 
prayer either morning or evening is falling 
upon evil days, and is too generally neglected. 
The causes of this are an open secret. Busi- 
ness, hurrying men off to the morning train, 
school, marshalling the children early, a com- 
plex domestic machinery and many artificial 
wants account for the lapse of morning prayer 
in the family. At night-fall every one is tired, 
and the family separates in various directions 
at once upon the close of the evening meal. A 
beautiful and hallowed custom, more than any 
other service, a bond in the family, allying it 
to God and heaven, is almost unknown to the 
children of our period. Why should we 
not bring it back, beginning with the new 
year! 

A young wife, marrying a man who was not 
even a regular attendant at church, and who 
had not been religiously educated, herself 
asked the blessing at the first meal in the new 



256 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

home. When the evening came on which she 
had usually gone to prayer-meeting she was 
ready, as she had been in her father's house, 
assuming her husband's escort as a matter of 
course. Every evening before they retired 
she read aloud a chapter of the Bible and a 
prayer from a little book of prayers. In less 
than a year the young husband was at his 
wife's side at the communion table. 

Shall we not all seek in the new year for 
greater fidelity in the inner life, and greater 
fruitfulness in the outer? u Lo! on a narrow 
neck of land, 'twixt two unbounded seas we 
stand." Here God has placed us; here Christ 
has saved us; here the Spirit condescends to 
make our hearts his home. 

Come, Lord Jesus ! 
The days are chill, the nights are drear, 
It is the winter of the year. 
The bloom is gone from flower and tree, 
What can we do but watch for thee? 



Come, Lord Jesus ! 
We'd yield thee of our first and best, 
Ah, wilt thou stoop to make request? 
Our offerings shall be full and free, 
The while we wait and watch for thee. 



A NARROW NECK OF LAND. 257 

Come, Lord Jesus ! 
Ah, voice that sounded in the room, 
Ah, Face Divine that breaks the gloom ! 
Oh, tones that thrill with "Come to me," 
Oh, heart that hastes to lean on thee ! 

Come, Lord Jesus ! 
Come, as thou wilt in peace or strife, 
Come, as thou wilt, in death or life, 
O Star upon the unknown sea, 
Arise our light of heaven to be. 

Even so. Come. 



The Call of the Future 



" We must find the leaders of the future in the 
classes that are shaped in the institutions which 
cultivate body, brain, heart and mind, and fit the 
young to assume posts of influence and duty." 




CHAPTER XX. 

THE CALL OF THE 
FUTURE. 

/ ^ VERY young man and woman reaches 
#"L in due time a parting of the ways, 
when the call of the future becomes 
peremptory and urgent. Childhood's irre- 
sponsibility soon passes. Early in life it is 
borne in upon most that they must prepare for 
life's tasks, and a little later the conviction 
deepens that they must make haste to assume 
them. There is nothing new in this. The 
successive generations of our race from re- 
motest antiquity have shared the experience 
which is common to the boys and girls of our 
own day. 

It seems to some of us that we were only 
yesterday where now our children are. With 
eager eyes and hurrying feet we trod the up- 
ward path. Our commencement day, our di- 



262 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

ploma, our good-by to school and college, 
were to us as interesting and important as they 
are to our sons and daughters. We heard the 
bugle call that summons them to action. 

We are not yet on the retired list, though 
we have fought in many battles and faced 
many an obstinate foe. Some of us have been 
bitterly disappointed; the ideals of others 
have changed; only a few have reaped that 
fruit of attainment that hangs temptingly 
from the bough when one is young, light- 
hearted and ambitious. Not the music of the 
future, but the echoes of the past, come to 
older people, as they tread the evening slopes. 
But they understand and sympathize, and to 
some extent share, the enthusiasm of the 
young, as they join in the plaudits which are 
given to those who start gallantly on a new 
campaign. Here and there is a fortunate 
soul, sanguine to the last, always spontaneous, 
always courageous, always dominant, and al- 
ways young. To such, the high call of the 
future is ever sounding, flung down from 
angel harps across the last river, and filling the 
earthly life with the minstrelsies of heavenly 
cheer. 



THE CALL OF THE FUTURE. 263 

From the great universities, splendidly 
equipped and amply endowed, thousands of 
graduates are going forth, to engage in the 
activities of the world. They are going also 
by thousands more, from smaller educational 
seats, which, though handicapped by poverty, 
still develop in their students all that is manly 
and womanly, still furnish them nobly with 
the essentials of scholarship. The small, the 
obscure, the struggling Alma Mater, in New 
England, in the West, in the South, or in the 
States on the long Pacific Coast, deserves well 
of her children. Not all the finely educated 
men and women are coming from the con- 
spicuous and crowded universities. They con- 
tribute their quota to those who shall consti- 
tute the leadership of the age, but there is a 
large and fine contingent that is sent out by 
humbler colleges, where poorly paid and little- 
known professors do missionary work in true 
missionary spirit, and are honored by the 
Lord whom they serve. 

In the several departments of government, 
finance, war, philanthropy, municipal and na- 
tional politics, missionary effort, and in that 
large and unselfish Christian endeavor which 



264 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

makes for the unlifting of humanity, the edu- 
cated young people who each summer issue 
from the classroom to mingle in world-busi- 
ness of some sort, will step into the foremost 
rank. Is there a line of battle, east or west, on 
sea or land? The captains are the picked 
men, the men who have known the rigor of 
study and the moulding of discipline. Is there 
need of reform in politics? Into the arena, 
alert for good government, spring the college 
men, men who have been made ready for the 
conflict by their serious study. Among the 
most efficient workers who help the poor, who 
tackle with brave hearts the problem of immi- 
gration, who never despair of elevating the 
masses, are the flower of our university men. 
If a governor is wanted in the Philippines, or 
a minister needed for a foreign embassy, he is 
chosen from the list of graduates whom a col- 
lege has armed for the delicate and diplomatic 
and tactful situations that confront a man 
when he deals with men. We must find the 
leaders of the future in the classes that are 
shaped in the institutions which cultivate body, 
brain, heart and mind, and fit the young -to 
assume posts of influence and duty. 



THE CALL OF THE FUTURE. 265 

The pressure of immediate necessity in 
many homes and the general desire on the part 
of the young to escape from tutelage and ac- 
cept obligations as soon as they may, combine 
to push the young too early into the thick of 
the fight. It sometimes seems as if in America 
we were jealous of the time it takes for chil- 
dren to grow up. They are hurried from 
grade to grade in the preparatory schools, has- 
tened through college, precipitated while yet 
immature upon society, that finds them crude 
and unripe, and naturally, they cease to learn 
and to grow. For evident reasons, where the 
want of the hour is not insistent, the prepara- 
tion for life should be extended. Post-gradu- 
ate work is not a wasteful expense of time or 
money for the teacher, the physician, the law- 
yer, or the student of science. Granted, fair 
ability and conscientious study on the student's 
part, it is wise, whenever it is possible, to pro- 
long the years of preparation, and to wait a 
little while before the conflict with active work 
begins. In this country and this age, that con- 
flict is seldom relaxed. The man who finds 
himself in the whirl of an intensely eager and 
strongly competitive period has not time to 



266 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

take breath, to drop his work, and sit down in 
quiet. 

Though I speak thus, I do not overlook the 
fact that there are multitudes of students who 
are compelled by the stern spur of necessity to 
finish their college course and get to work as 
early as practicable. They are brave and 
buoyant, and when I look into their faces, I 
see there that sincerity of purpose, that invinci- 
ble resolution which shows that the future will 
not call upon them in vain. 

In one college, for example, there is a 
young girl who has wholly supported herself 
since she was fifteen. As mother's helper, as 
waitress in a summer hotel, as general house- 
servant working in the early morning and the 
late evening, she has earned and paid her way, 
assisted by a scholarship in the latter years of 
her college life. No task has been shirked. 
She has kept pace with her fellow-students, but 
she has had and has sought no holidays, and 
when she commences her life beyond college 
walls, she will have had an all-round training 
in service, which few can surpass. I am sorry 
for the long hours and the hard work, for the 
good times that have passed her by, but I 



THE CALL OF THE FUTURE. 267 

would not show her my sorrow, for such a 
young woman would scorn pity. She has seen 
her goal. It has been ever before her, and in 
attaining it she has achieved much and already 
reaped a rich reward. She is a representative 
of a large number of young people of both 
sexes, children of the farm-house and the tene- 
ment, children of plain families, who do not 
ask odds of fortune, but go forth and conquer 
their way, step by step. 

Emerson says in an essay on "The Method 
of Nature," "What a debt is ours to that old 
religion which in the childhood of most of us 
still dwelt like a Sabbath morning in the coun- 
try of New England, teaching privation, self- 
denial and sorrow? A man was born not for 
prosperity, but to suffer for the good of 
others, like the noble rock maple which all 
around our villages bleeds for the service of 
man. Not praise, not men's acceptance of our 
doing, but the Spirit's holy errand through us 
absorbed the thought. How dignified was 
this ! How all that is called talent and success 
in our noisy capitals becomes buzz and din be- 
fore this worthiness!" 

The plain truth is that the tree so rooted 



268 THE DAILY PATHWAY. 



that no storm can shake it is the tree that en- 
dures longest. If adverse circumstances do 
not embitter the spirit, nor crush the physical 
strength, they do no harm in the end, and as 
I think of the many who have forged to the 
front, notwithstanding hard conditions, I re- 
peat that they are a brave and buoyant com- 
pany. 

Success is the net result of innumerable and 
persevering efforts made with intelligent de- 
sign. The idler never succeeds. Neither does 
success come to the person who swings like a 
pendulum from side to side with no settled 
purpose. "Unstable as water thou shalt not 
excel," and "Thou art weighed in the bal- 
ances and found wanting," are the words writ- 
ten to-day on the records of those who are lag- 
gards in the race, or weak, cowardly and vacil- 
lating. 

We are much too ready to call the person 
signally successful who makes a fortune. The 
country is rich, its resources are expanding, 
and luxury is on the increase. To hear some 
people talk, you would suppose that the only 
success worth mentioning was that which is 
counted in dollars and cents, which gives' a 



THE CALL OF THE FUTURE. 269 

man the control of millions. A millionaire is 
no longer singular. We have men whose 
wealth foots up to many millions, and our 
young people are dazzled by the sight of this 
success, as if there were no other. 

Yet the great surgeon who mitigates human 
pain, the great scientist who discovers and ap- 
plies new secrets of nature and brings the ends 
of the earth nearer together, the great ad- 
miral, the great commander managing by sea 
and land those battles that are God's battles, 
working out God's hidden purposes, the great 
orator handling vast things by a magic purely 
spiritual and subtle, the great teacher, im- 
pressing and shaping childhood and youth, 
and the great missionary winning alien peoples 
to the cross, are each and all greater and more 
truly successful than the one who simply 
amasses money, and is king in the market- 
place. 

Our hearts are uplifted in earnest prayer 
that the young who are to be graduated from 
our colleges and seminaries may indeed see 
visions of future power, self-denial and loving 
labor. 

Nothing is so important as that these edu- 



2 7 o THE DAILY PATHWAY. 

cated young people shall be Christians in the 
vital and real sense, which makes the disciple 
cling close to and constantly imitate his Lord. 
If they receive into honest hearts his teaching 
in their colleges, they will go out immensely 
influential and immensely blessed. On the 
other hand, if they leave college without hav- 
ing given their fealty to Christ, the danger is 
that they will never become his followers and 
friends, that they will drift into the ranks of 
his enemies. Would that all our dear young 
people might have a vision of the Lord, look- 
ing down upon them from the sky, and that 
each might hasten to answer, "Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do?" 

Then their heart's cry would be, 

"Open our eyes, good Lord, open our eyes, 
For thou hast girt thyself in captive guise, 
And from the heathen gloom, thy voice we hear, 

'I was in prison, and ye left me there !' 
Open our eyes, good Lord, open our eyes ! 

"Open our minds, good Lord, open our minds ! 
When sin or selfishness man's conscience blinds, 
Scatter the mists that cloud thy clear command ; 
Then with rich blessing on each Christless strand 
Open thy hand, good Lord, open thy hand!" 



SEP 21 190* 



mmf^L2L congress 



